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Catch Me Daddy
(2014)
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Simran Hans
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An exhilaratingly tense and stylish thriller that is a sure-fire sign of promising things to come.
Posted Aug 01, 2017
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5/5
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The Neon Demon
(2016)
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Martyn Conterio
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Imagine a Vogue fashion shoot directed by Count Dracula. That's The Neon Demon.
Posted Jun 07, 2016
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5/5
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Midnight Special
(2016)
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Martyn Conterio
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This is a movie featuring awe, magic and wonder unburdened by an over-reliance on computer-animated imagery to add the wow factor and unique selling point.
Posted Feb 17, 2016
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2/5
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Love
(2015)
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Martyn Conterio
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After an astounding 1998 debut, I Stand Alone, followed by 2002's notorious Irreversible and 2009's psychotropic odyssey Enter the Void, French cinema's arch provocateur, Gaspar Noé, has finally delivered the grand folly that was perhaps always in him.
Posted May 28, 2015
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4/5
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Green Room
(2015)
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Martyn Conterio
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If director Jeremy Saulnier's debut feature, Blue Ruin, was a bit of mournful Appalachian bluegrass, his follow-up, Green Room, is a fast-paced stomper with a snappy three-chord chorus: the film equivalent of The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop".
Posted May 22, 2015
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The Woods Movie
(2015)
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Anton Bitel
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Outside of specialist genre showcases like Glasgow FrightFest - where [it] enjoyed its own well-receivedworld premire - perhaps the only proper home for this ancillary feature is on a DVD or Blu-ray as a making-of extra. Still, it is a good one.
Posted Mar 05, 2015
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My Little Sweet Pea
(2013)
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Anton Bitel
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a well-observed tale of mothers and daughters, and the important things that often remain unsaid between them.
Posted Jan 29, 2015
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A Letter to Momo
(2011)
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Anton Bitel
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Though made by the studio Production I.G, this is a markedly Ghibli-esque affair, overtly referencing Miyazaki's My Neighbour Totoro and Princess Mononoke among others.
Posted Jan 29, 2015
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The Handsome Suit
(2008)
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Anton Bitel
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flamboyant CGI and animated inserts are added in an apparent attempt to cover up an over-obvious, already over-stretched plot, not to mention a rather forced sense of hilarity.
Posted Jan 29, 2015
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Blood and Bones
(2004)
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Anton Bitel
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from all these contradictions emerges a potted history of Japan told from an exile's perspective.
Posted Jan 29, 2015
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All About Our House
(2001)
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Anton Bitel
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a broad comedy in which a young urban professional couple try to build their dream home on a suburban lot, only for their hip interior designer to clash with the wife's father... in divergent visions of how Japanese identity should be constructed.
Posted Jan 29, 2015
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Carmen From Kawachi
(1966)
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Anton Bitel
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a self-conscious adaptation of the opera Carmen..., except that, once transplanted to the shifting mores of 60s Japan, Bizet's tragic heroine cannot help but become a more triumphant figure, taking full control of her own destiny.
Posted Jan 29, 2015
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Wood Job!
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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involves the encounter between urban & rural, modern & traditional, the mundane & the spiritual, not to mention, thanks to a bizarre fertility ritual practised in this woodland community, a (metaphorical) merging between the phallic & the yonic.
Posted Jan 29, 2015
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The Light Shines Only There
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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concerns two characters, trapped as much by their circumstances as their insular environs, who seek a fragile refuge in each other... a subtle, broody film.
Posted Jan 29, 2015
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St. Vincent
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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This is, in short, an America where the very survival of ordinary, hard-working citizens requires solidarity, and a degree of saintliness. Amid all this socieconomic critique, the film also never forgets to be funny.
Posted Dec 02, 2014
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1/5
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Polisse
(2011)
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Martyn Conterio
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Polisse goes nowhere pretty fast and is merely satisfied with highlighting issues with little resolution to offer. Somehow we're meant to take this as gravitas.
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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4/5
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Prometheus
(2012)
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Martyn Conterio
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For those who like their sci-fi with serious intent (however crazy the ideas), Scott's return to the genre offers excitement and grand themes to ponder whilst leaving things open for a counter-mythology to develop
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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5/5
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The Dark Knight Rises
(2012)
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Martyn Conterio
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The Dark Knight Rises is quite possibly everything you'd want from a blockbuster and superhero movie.
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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4/5
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Looper
(2012)
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Martyn Conterio
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In a world dominated by big budget movies bereft of real ideas, here's a sci-fi film that could well become a cult classic.
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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3/5
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West of Memphis
(2012)
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Martyn Conterio
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West of Memphis is a truly haunting film that manages - through the sheer power of a spectacular narrative - to capture the very best and the very worst of humanity.
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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5/5
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Outside Satan
(2011)
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Martyn Conterio
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It is often said that the Lord moves in mysterious ways. The very same can be said of Dumont and his unique style of filmmaking. Spread the word.
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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3/5
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V/H/S
(2012)
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Martyn Conterio
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The filmmakers forgo suspense and terror for small time chills, laughs and post-modern irony
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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4/5
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Antiviral
(2012)
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Martyn Conterio
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Brandon Cronenberg's movie works equally as a social satire and a supremely twisted horror tale that would make his Pop proud.
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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2/5
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The ABCs of Death
(2012)
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Martyn Conterio
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Twenty-six segments over the course of two hours and nine minutes asks an awful lot of the viewer and pushes the format to breaking point.
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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2/5
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Evil Dead
(2013)
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Martyn Conterio
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For all the OTT gothic visuals and newly invented backstories involving witchcraft and family woes, Alvarez is clearly no Sam Raimi.
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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4/5
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Maniac
(2012)
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Martyn Conterio
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Franck Khalfoun's Maniac is that rarest of cinematic offerings - a superior movie to the one upon which it's directly based.
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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4/5
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The Lords of Salem
(2012)
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Martyn Conterio
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The Lords of Salem is Zombie's best film work since The Devil's Rejects - a wacked-out-of-its-gourd horror show with an impish subtext mindful of cultural persecution
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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4/5
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You're Next
(2011)
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Martyn Conterio
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Adam Wingard's latest, the threateningly titled You're Next, is a whip-smart whodunit in the vein of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939) and its savage progeny, the slasher movie.
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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4/5
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American Mary
(2012)
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Martyn Conterio
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American Mary uses the traditional mad scientist figure to offer a cautionary tale warning that avarice makes the heart grow darker.
Posted Nov 12, 2014
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Horns
(2013)
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Anton Bitel
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The best material here is the film's satire of smalltown American values, of the modern media and of celebrity culture (the last embodied by Heather Graham's fame-hungry, narcissistic waitress Veronica)...
Posted Oct 29, 2014
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The President
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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an uncompromising, if not entirely unforgiving parable of the trappings - and traps - of power, as well as a fairytale that leaves the viewer to decide the likelihood that they will all live happily ever after.
Posted Oct 21, 2014
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Suburban Gothic
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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a ramshackle, tone-deaf curiosity, with just about enough funny moments to make the more meandering scenes and pointless digressions pass by - but... it is not just that Bates shows potential to improve - he has already done much better.
Posted Oct 02, 2014
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Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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at its most interesting not as a whistle-stop tour of Cannon's mostly lowest-common-denominator output, but rather as an examination of an industry in flux whose current marketing and methodology Cannon itself helped create, for better or for worse.
Posted Sep 29, 2014
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Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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a making-of for a film that never got made - or at least never as intended.... The anecdotes here are frank and fascinating, and there are few raconteurs more mesmerising than Stanley.
Posted Sep 04, 2014
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Faults
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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What starts as a closely observed, blackly funny study of flawed character ends as a sly confidence trick movie that... trusts its viewers to put all the pieces together and work out how the impossible is in fact possible.
Posted Sep 01, 2014
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Doc of the Dead
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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as a whistle-stop tour of zombieland, Doc of the Dead covers a lot of ground - and if it is not the first exegesis of the undead, you can be sure it will not be the last either.
Posted Sep 01, 2014
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Blood Moon
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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Like a postcolonial Navaho warrior exiled from his people and trapped in a silly costume, this film is unable to recover from its own identity crisis, and merely goes through the genre motions.
Posted Sep 01, 2014
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The Expedition
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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Normally with found footage, a delicate balance must be struck between crazy genre developments and the kind of banality that... creates the illusion of realism. Here however, for an intolerably long time there seems to be nothing but banality
Posted Sep 01, 2014
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The Visitor
(1979)
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Anton Bitel
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Lysergically painted-and-composited backgrounds & lo-fi light shows bring a striking if cheesy otherworldliness to the film's alien elements; and the film's cosmic duels are carried out neither with fire and brimstone nor laser guns....
Posted Sep 01, 2014
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Life After Beth
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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as Baena brings the plot to its thoroughly surreal climax, there is a blurring of the banal and the apocalyptic that is all his own. Pain, loss and eventual recovery may be the theme, but this is good grief.
Posted Aug 30, 2014
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The Sleeping Room
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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Once the possessions and ghostly manifestations have fully kicked in, it all becomes a little Punch and Judy ... but The Sleeping Room works best as an incestuous love letter to Brighton and the town's darker, ever-present history.
Posted Aug 30, 2014
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Dead Within
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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Ben Wagner's cabin-fever creation is a sharply nuanced survivor's tale that leaves the viewer to disentangle the genre tropes from their underlying triggers, and the reality from its delirious breakdown.
Posted Aug 30, 2014
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White Settlers
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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even if White Settlers is somewhat flawed, it has certainly come at the perfect moment, and may even, at least within the shadowy borderlands of the horror community, spark a debate about the rights and wrongs of Scottish claims to independence.
Posted Aug 30, 2014
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Milo
(2013)
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Anton Bitel
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disgusting and grotesque, but also funny throughout, and amiable precisely because of its great affection for even the most odious of its characters, as befits a film so preoccupied with arseholes.
Posted Aug 30, 2014
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WolfCop
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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a gloriously lowbrow shaggy dog tale that puts its own spin on the werewolf mythos, makes a hero of a conventional monster, and has enough genre-savvy gags and goofs to get any well lubricated audience howling with laughter.
Posted Aug 30, 2014
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The Forgotten
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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Frampton handles the scares masterfully - but it is the pervasive sense of sadness that will haunt you longer.
Posted Aug 30, 2014
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The Last Showing
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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You can admire its self-referential construction, its meta murder, its games with perspective - but in the end, Stuart is less another iconic villain for Englund than a self-satisfied smartarse with a sadistically psychotic streak.
Posted Aug 30, 2014
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Preservation
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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Denham's film has the anxieties of post-9/11 America firmly in it sights, asking what kind of example the nation's recent history of violent adventurism abroad has set for the next generation of boys with toys.
Posted Aug 30, 2014
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X Moor
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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Inevitably, though, X Moor must at some point settle on a subgenre, and once it gets down to slasher business, the films starts to show a more routine side
Posted Aug 30, 2014
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The Signal
(2014)
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Anton Bitel
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It is as if someone had decided to turn high-concept SF into a lyrical indie poem, where ideas and feelings trump noisy genre gestures - which makes the film stand out, quietly, from the crowd, even as it confronts the bounds of infinity.
Posted Aug 29, 2014
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