Film Reviews

Review by Leslie Byron Pitt Jeremy Saulnier’s stomach churning thriller; Green Room hits you with the blunt force of a dull cleaver. Its execution is brutal, it's characters timely and its tension more than palpable. Saulnier previously delved into the mundane yet murky effects of amateur revenge in his earlier feature; Blue Ruin. Here in Green Room, he mines at the often mentioned white anxieties with a similar, creepy accuracy, compacting a measurable amount of visceral thrills into a tight...

Review by Leslie Byron Pitt Arabian Nights finishes in very much the same it started two volumes ago: Obliquely. As mentioned in a previous instalment, praise cannot go high enough for Miguel Gomes ambition to capture his home country in a desolate state of stasis.  Ravaged by austerity, in the first volume we saw the director himself unable to create the film he envisioned due to the country’s economic strife. Now, in The Enchanted One, we almost see the grand...

The latest in the interwoven superhero tapestry that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America: Civil War directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, pits Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) and Captain America (Chris Evans) against each other with the fate of The Avengers hanging in the balance. If you look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a ludicrously high budget TV series, Civil War would serve as a much celebrated season finale; the grand culmination of all that has come...

Review by Leslie Byron Pitt The second section of Miguel Gomes’ Portuguese austerity odyssey doesn’t lighten the load in anyway, though at time it feels more engaging than the previous entry. This section features more nude women that play along with its fantasy elements. Unfortunately, two of the tales featured are more tedious than what’s come before it. Again the ideas are sound. The first tale informs us of a condemned man and how he arranges his guilt after many...

Review by Leslie Byron Pitt Arabian Nights – The Restless One is the type of film in which you can easily imagine certain cliques chomping at the bit to discuss and lavish praise upon. However, if the film doesn’t hit the same sweet spot, you can easily see the same cliques instantly dismissed as some sort of Philistine. At one private joke. Almost as if they’re laughing at you. It’s hard not to think this. You just spent a good...

Review by Jack Deslandes Filmed entirely in one take, Victoria is a roller coaster ride of nail-biting tension and heart-stopping suspense that, if you make it through, will leave you bitter, cold, and gasping for breath. The story takes place between the hours of 4 and 6 am as it follows a young woman’s night, which quickly descends into a world of class A drugs and violent criminal gangsters. In a night that begins with her carelessly partying in an...

Written by Leslie Byron Pitt It’s still hard to imagine that there were financiers who were willing to take a chance on a horror film like Re-Animator. This is meant favourably, as the 1985 Stuart Gordon film is the type of deranged cult classic that would manipulate young minds into full blown horror hounds. Horror films like Re-Animator feel like lightening in a bottle. A perfect storm of confidence and craziness. When filmmakers throw caution to the wind and the...

Written by Leslie Byron Pitt/@Afrofilmviewer Kent Jones’s pithy and informative documentary; Hitchcock/Truffaut is released via home format, soon after film critics and viewers alike, have been in remembrance of Roger Ebert’s passing three short years ago. Hitchcock/Truffaut is also finding its way to homes not soon since the dying down of the critical mauling, fan defending theatrical release of Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice. The connective tissue of these three events is simply thus: Art in however it’s consumed...

Written by Ellery Nick Escaping into the Welsh wilderness, a young couple takes a wrong turn in their car and ends up nose first in a stream. As luck with have it, the crash is heard by the only man for miles around who hurries to lend a hand. But why were they fleeing? It seems the couple have some secrets and they’ve just found a stranger with a few of his own. And so Gareth Bryn, director of Hinterland,...