Film

“Zoology” is a film that starts off bleak but ends up becoming enchanting as it move towards its conclusion. Written and directed by Ivan I. Tverdovskiy and starring, Natalya Pavlenkova as the principal character, the story focuses on a middle-aged woman who grows a tail. This may seem like a hardship too far for many but in fact it appears to be both the best and worst thing that has ever happened to Natasha. The story is told in intimate...

“Killing Ground” is a horror film by Tasmanian born writer-director Damien Power. It is a film that takes its cues from other Australian horror cinema such as Wolf Creek and the film has tones of the low budget British horror, Eden Lake. The film focuses on Sam (Harriet Dyer) and Ian (Ian Meadows) who are on a camping trip to a remote part of the Australian outback that holds fond memories of Ian’s youth. It’s New Years Eve and the...

A film prop auction raised almost £4 million - including a whopping £30,500 for Marty McFly's 'self-lacing' light-up trainers. The UK's largest ever memorabilia auction also included Chris Pratt's Guardians of the Galaxy helmet, which went for £134,200, and a bullwhip used by Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones for £79,300. Jules Winnfield's Samuel L Jackson Bad Mother Fucker Wallet from Pulp Fiction. Prop Store, who held the auction in partnership with Odeon, flogged more than 600 items from blockbusters including...

By Sam Inglis The title sequence is, it seems to me, in danger of becoming one of the lost arts of cinema. Frequently now, we will see only a few production logos before a film begins, with even the title card frequently being saved for the end. I think this is a great shame, as a great title sequence can serve two purposes. First, it can be a great sequence in its own right; a piece of storytelling or even,...

By Jim Mackney The Road to Mandalay is a bewitching, social-realist drama from Taiwanese film director, Midi Z. The drama focuses on Lianqing (Wu Ke-xi) and her pursuit of a better life in Bangkok. The film’s opening ten minutes portrays the first steps on her journey, including her being smuggled over the Burma/Thailand border. Initially she has only paid enough to gain a place in the boot of the truck but Guo (Kai Ko), a boy from the same Burmese district...

“Dunkirk was a great defeat, and a great miracle.” For those who thought Christopher Nolan’s shattering summer spectacle could have benefitted from greater historical context need look no further than Leslie Norman’s epic wartime classic from 1958, which is now being re-released on DVD & Blu-Ray with a gorgeous 2k restoration. A dramatisation of the dramatic events that led to Operation Dynamo, in which the British Army succeeded in rescuing over 300-thousand men from the shores of France, Norman tells...

“I thought that it would be a challenge, but a very exciting challenge.” The first draft of celebrated animator Michaël Dudok de Wit’s script for his debut feature, The Red Turtle, did contain some dialogue; “between 15 and 20 lines, which I had written totally believing they were necessary at key moments to explain the motivations of the protagonists, and also to create more empathy with the characters,” he tells me over the phone. Indeed, it was the Japanese producers...

Filmmakers have always enjoyed bringing us unlikely love stories. Whether it is Annie Hall, Harold and Maude, Her, or even Beauty and the Beast there are plenty of films that have shown how love can blossom in the most challenging of environments and circumstances. With On Body and Soul, the latest feature from Ildikó Enyedi, we see a re-imagination of this old formulae. Set in a Budapest abattoir, On Body and Soul follows Endre (Géza Morcsányi) the financial director and...

By Michael McNulty The steady plucking of an electric guitar explodes into the title theme, “Django, have you always been alone,” croons Luis Bacalov as a man in a heavy coat and black Stetson walks away from the screen dragging a heavy, muddied coffin along the ground and so opens Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 Spaghetti Western classic, Django. It goes without saying that if there was no Django there would be no Django Unchained. Quentin Tarantino spoke openly about the influence...