Film

In Juliet, Naked director Jesse Peretz (Nurse Jackie, GLOW) offers a disarmingly compelling romantic comedy, which despite its decidedly contrived and uneven narrative still manages to deliver a hearteningly charming storyline about second chances in life, in this surprisingly enjoyable adaptation of Nick Hornby’s 2009 best selling novel of the same name. Annie (Rose Byrne) is stuck in a long-term relationship with Duncan (Chris O’Dowd), a nerdy university professor whom she feels has been taking their relationship for granted for several years. For Duncan, the couple are...

It’s Halloween soon, so a lot of movie lovers are planning horror marathons for the season. I’ve clearly gone mad, so I figured I would try to suggest the longest endurance test of them all: a 24 hour horrorthon. I’m five minutes short, but hopefully you’ll forgive that. Obviously I’d suggest doing this over two days, because I’ve not built in little things like tea breaks or meals. I’ve listed the titles alphabetically, leaving you free to juggle how you’d...

Over the last month I've been covering the London Film Festival for TLE, trying largely to bring you a taste of the slightly more esoteric side of the festival. The time, sadly, has come to wrap up our coverage for this year, but there's one last thing to do: our wrap up show. In the near future we'll have a regular podcast coming from TLE, but until then here's a special instalment with myself and Alfie Parsons of Lights Camera...

Hannibal Lecter, Pennywise the clown and Halloween's Michael Myers have emerged among a list of cinematic figures who terrified us when they first graced the silver screen. A study into the most frightening films and figures ever revealed the star of The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter, is the villain who sends the most chills down our spines. A Nightmare on Elm Street nasty Freddy Krueger took second place in the scare stakes, followed by Pennywise the clown, the...

What we mean by horror is something that expands and evolves over the years. This is perhaps especially true of tech horror. From the possibilities of electricity being harnessed to horrific and tragic ends in Frankenstein, to the modern slew of desktop thrillers, horror writers and filmmakers have always harnessed new tech for new scares. Cam, written by Isa Mazzei (who herself used to work as a camgirl) introduces us to Alice (Madeline Brewer), who does cam shows as Lola...

“Did you?” asked the woman at the box office as I asked for my ticket for I Used to be Normal. I considered lying, but decided against it. “Not really”. I’ve been an obsessive fan of movies since I was 8 years old but, while some of the kinds of films I love best are (especially as a 37-year-old man) not exactly considered cool, I’ve never felt judged or that I should hide my enthusiasms. That seems to be one...

The Halloween franchise has taken many forms since the first film was released in 1978. In the subsequent years there have been no fewer than seven sequels, two reboots, several novels, and a series of comics. Rather than tangling itself in the franchise’s messy back catalogue, director David Gordon Green pretends that the underwhelming attempts to bring life back into the series never happened. The latest incarnation of Halloween acts as a direct sequel to the original and takes place exactly 40 years after...

It didn’t surprise anyone who saw his first film, Michael, to discover that director Markus Schleinzer used to work with Michael Haneke. Disquietingly still and at times striking, it was a debut that felt too in thrall to another filmmaker to be more than promising. Angelo, while sharing may of the same stylistic choices, is a more distinctive work. The Angelo of the title is the ‘court moor’ to several families in Viennese society in the 18th century, and the...

With his first two films, writer/director S. Craig Zahler established a distinctive voice. Working in exploitation cinema but unbound by the genre’s usual brief running times, he has stretched out his narratives, using the extra running time to dive more deeply into his characters than is typical in exploitation and to play with the genre. In Bone Tomahawk he morphed The Searchers into Cannibal Holocaust, with Brawl in Cell Block 99 he spent a good deal of time building both...