A quote from Søren Kierkegaard – don’t worry, this gets funny soon – kept coming to mind as I watched Oldřich Lipský’s Happy End, now released on Blu-Ray for the first time by Second Run. The Danish philosopher said “It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
Danger Zone (Kinoteka 2024) (Review)
It’s the kind of sentiment you expect to hear on stage at the Kodak Theater around this time of year: “It’s important to learn from the suffering of other people”. Except this time it’s not coming from the mouth of someone who’s just made an Oscar-winning film, it’s said by […]
One Percenter (2023): Japanese Fall Guy delivers eighty-five minutes of mayhem (Review)
For some people, films about film-making are insufferable exercises in navel-gazing, nothing more than a way for self-absorbed artistes to force us to experience their creative angst. Yet there is a long history of this kind of meta-film within that least pretentious of genres, action. There’s a pretty simple reason […]
A Wolfpack Called Ernesto (2023): Experimental look at Mexican Gang Culture (Review)
As one of the subjects of Everardo Gonzáles’s new film A Wolfpack Called Ernesto puts it, “you get involved by looking”. Where theatre has monologues and novels have first-person narration, film has the close-up as its signature method of encouraging you to identify with a character’s emotions. You could chart […]
Experimental Shorts (Slamdance Film Festival 2024) (Review)
Even in a festival as dedicated to the unexpected as Slamdance, there’s only one strand where you can see a film whose descriptive subtitles specify the sound of “[downpour of fish]”. It’s the experimental shorts strand, a useful opportunity to press your ear to the film-making underground. The fishy rain […]
Demon Mineral (Slamdance Film Festival 2024)(Review)
Now just a year away from its thirtieth birthday, Slamdance remains focused on low-budget films from emerging directors. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s alienated from the mainstream, though. The 2024 festival has specialist strands dealing with two areas that have been unexpectedly prominent in mainstream media of late. One of […]
The Civil Dead (2022) A Mumblecore Shaggy Dog Story with None of the Downsides (Review)
Giving himself a home-made haircut that turns into a “full-on mullet”, Clay – the hero of The Civil Dead, released in UK cinemas this week – can see the hopeful side. His photography business has been struggling: having terrible hair might be the gimmick he needs. The Civil Dead itself […]
Murder Obsession (1981): Late-Period Meta-Giallo With Some Unforgettable Set-Pieces (Review)
In terms of titles that encapsulate the appeal of a whole genre, there aren’t many competitors, are there? You have the murder, you have the obsession, and every giallo must feature both, but only one of them is called Murder Obsession. Riccardo Freda’s final film, reissued on Blu-Ray by Radiance […]
Booger (Soho Horror Festival 2023)(Review)
You’re right, it’s quite a title, and it could have been worse as, if Ted Nugent wasn’t such an unacceptable figure these days, Mary Dauterman’s feature debut could have been called Cat Scratch Fever. Anna, the film’s protagonist, receives a nasty clawing from her pet cat Booger that results in […]
Hippo (Soho Horror Film Festival 2023)(Review)
The title character of Mark H. Rapaport’s debut film, played by the film’s co-writer Kimball Farley, is an amateur film-maker who, quoting Nikola Tesla, promises his audience “man-made horrors beyond your comprehension” – and the Soho Horror Festival seem to have agreed by hosting the film’s UK premiere. It’s no […]