Film Reviews

By Michael McNulty Rupert Jones introduces an interesting film into the psychodrama genre that sits somewhere between Hitchcock’s Psycho and Polanski’s Repulsion.  Kaleidoscope is a gruellingly suspenseful chamber piece that delves deep into the cracked psychosis of its central character. Existing high up in the tight, confines of his bare council flat, ex-convict, Carl (Toby Jones) lives a life of relative urban isolation.  He is saving money to buy a van, works as a landscaper and does the shopping for...

L’ecole Buissonniere is a slow moving French period drama, one that is perfect for a cold, drizzly Sunday afternoon. This is not intended as a criticism and the film acts in the same way dunking a freshly ripped piece of bread into a steaming bowl of stew is often the most comforting thing you can do of an evening. Directed Nicolas Vanier along with his directors of photography, Eric Guichard and Laurent Charbonnier, Vanier guides the camera contemplatively across the...

Eric Judor brings us a slight, satirical comedy in his third feature, Problemos. Urbanite couple, Victor (Eric Judor) and Jeanne (Celia Rosich), with their young daughter Margaux travel to a commune to visit ex yoga instructor and old friend of Jeanne’s, Jean-Paul (Michel Nabokoff), for a weekend.  The camp is full of born again hippies sporting dodgy haircuts, djembes, and flimsy new age, socially conscious beliefs.  We quickly learn that they are a collective who have rejected city living and...

By Jim Mackney De plus belle is a French rom-com by debut director, Anne-Gaëlle Daval, and it is a curious take on the romantic comedy genre, focusing much more on the sense of self of the main character Lucie (Florence Foresti), as she battles with the physical and mental side effects of having breast cancer. Admittedly this doesn’t sound a particularly happy area to mine for that usual light touch that romantic comedies aim for but De plus belle manages...

Seen by many to be William Friedkin’s overlooked masterpiece, Sorcerer was a box office flop and was met with rather mixed reviews upon its original release. After the budget ballooned to around £22 million, the film struggled to recoup half that at the box office. The critical response wasn’t much better with Leslie Halliwell going as far as saying that it was ‘truly insulting’. Perhaps it was because Sorcerer could not compete with Star Wars that opened the same summer or that it did not meet...

The Silence of the Lambs is a piece of classic horror cinema, and in the great canon of Hollywood horror it sits happily alongside The Exorcist and Nosferatu. The film is being re-released as part of the “BFI Thriller: Who Can You Trust” season and has been artfully up-scaled and rendered in 4K. The visuals are enhanced and do not look that out of place with modern Hollywood productions, aside from the obvious slight dull look to the colours. It...

By Michael McNulty If you’re looking for a poorly sketched portrait of Paul Gauguin, then Edouard Deluc’s film, Gauguin, might be just the thing for you.  This quasi-biography is a tepid attempt at painting the artists life in the romantic brush strokes that he surely would have liked to have been remember by. A bedraggled Gauguin (Vincent Cassel) is desperate to leave Paris, “there’s not a face or a landscape worth painting,” he passionately explains to his paintbrush wielding brethren. ...

Taking seven days to shoot and incorporating 78 camera setups and 52 cuts, the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is one of the most memorable and iconic sequences in cinematic history. In 78/52 director Alexandre O. Philippe looks behind the curtain of Hitchcock’s most famous murder. Joining him is an impressive ensemble of directors, editors, actors, and film historians that includes Bret Easton Ellis, Peter Bogdanovich, Jamie Lee Curtis, Elijah Wood, and Guillermo de Toro. Each has their own different experience encountering Psycho and each...

By Jim Mackney Nearly forty years have passed since The Shining was first released in 1980. It was Stanley Kubrick’s only proper foray into horror but it can be said that many of his films, A Clockwork Orange for example, have heavily flirted with the genre. This Halloween the film is being rereleased in glorious 4K! Is it worth the admission price, after nearly forty years? The honest answer to this lies somewhere in the unhelpful, no mans land of...