Film

By Michael McNulty Slap a GoPro tag on Base, Richard Parry’s film about base jumping and upload it in full HD to YouTube and you have an 80 minute sponsored video.  But, like the content uploaded by thrill seeking jumpers, this film holds an odd fascination that’s not entirely dissatisfying. A docu-fiction film, Base manages to captures some truly astonishing vistas and some heart stopping, stomach churning free-falling.  The parachute that catches this film and slows it down is its plot....

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...

By Sam Inglis In the woods, somewhere in the US, Paul, Sarah and their son Travis (Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo and Kelvin Harrison Jr) have sheltered themselves in their house. A deadly plague has swept through the country. They are among the survivors, and trying to remain that way. One night they hear a noise and discover Will (Christopher Abbott), who says he thought the house was empty and was looking for supplies for his wife Kim and young son...

Can’t let a day pass by without watching a good movie or your favorite TV show? While it’s fun to go to the movies, it proves impractical and expensive for most people. These are the same reasons why movie streaming services have emerged in popularity. Paired with the increasing availability of high-speed internet connection, these streaming websites make watching online videos as easy and convenient as turning on the television.   Paid Vs Free It’s worth noting, however, that not...

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...

By Michael McNulty Samuel Fuller has become somewhat of a regular feature of the Forgotten Friday Series, but there is something so indelibly magnificent about his canon of films that make not making every Friday instalment a Fuller film an act of sheer willpower.  In fact, it should be mandatory that everybody have a Fuller box-set sitting on their DVD shelf that they can reach for whenever they are in doubt as to what to watch.  This is the man...