Film

By Michael McNulty Luis Buñuel’s film Belle de Jour, released in 1967, took the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and stands in film history as one of the most, if not the most, erotic films of all time. Based on Joseph Kessel’s, a Russian who lived in Argentina and wrote in French, novel of the same name, Belle de Jour may not seem as salacious now as when it first appeared, both in print and on the silver...

By Linda Marric Considered by many as one of the most talented animators working in Europe at the moment, Michael Dudok de Wit hit the jackpot when he was approached out of the blue by Studio Ghibli to make a film with them. The result was one of the best received films at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and went on to win praise as well as prizes around the world. The Red Turtle came out of nowhere to steal...

The Other Side of Hope concerns itself with the struggles of two contrasting men who have both left their homes. One is Khlaed (Sherwan Haji), a Syrian asylum seeker who arrives in Helsinki via a dozen other European countries and who hopes to have finally found a new home. The other is Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen), who leaves his alcoholic wife and life as a shirt salesman, and is soon seen risking his life savings in a poker game. After winning...

The Red Turtle opens with the sight of a nameless man struggling to stay on-board his small boat in a huge storm. After he wakes on a deserted island, he finds water and fruit to live off, but decides to leave and builds a bamboo raft to sail away on. Each time he tries to leave his boat is destroyed by a red turtle and he is left stranded on the island once more. One night he sees the turtle...

By Linda Marric For an animation film primarily aimed at children, Spark: A Space Tale seems to spend an unusual amount of time trying to please its adult viewers. With multiple attempts at referencing anything from Stars Wars to WALL·E ( Andrew Stanton, 2008), director Aaron Wooley tries his very best to inject some much needed life into the narrative, but sadly falls short of entirely convincing. With a voice cast which includes Jessica Biel, Hilary Swank, Patrick Stewart and...

By Linda Marric First of all let’s start with the good news, because despite earlier misgiving about yet another outing, there is no doubt that the fifth film in the Pirates of The Caribbean franchise is far more coherent than its most recent predecessor. Yes Salazar’s Revenge is way more knowing and far better crafted than On Stranger Tides (2011), but that is not to say that this latest instalment brings anything new or original to the usual seafaring shenanigans....

There was a moment of brief dismay during this year’s Oscar ceremony, when it suddenly looked as if a brutish form of populism would once again break our optimism. For many, the awards were already a foregone conclusion, the early momentum swinging, as expected, towards Damien Chazelle’s delightful La La Land & Barry Jenkins’ compelling Moonlight. So when Mel Gibson’s barbarous wartime blockbuster Hacksaw Ridge earned a surprise win for Best Editing, it momentarily planted a thought that – despite...

Comedian Demetri Martin once said that “if you put on flip flops, you’re saying: ‘Hope I don’t get chased today’.” Growing up in Oakland, where just taking a wrong turn in a bad neighbourhood could lead to a beating, or worse, Brandon (Jahking Guillory), a spindly & sensitive soul in his mid-teens, lives an impoverished existence where the girls ignore him and even his two best friends, Albert and Rico (Christopher Jordan Wallace & Christopher Meyer), pick on him. On...

By Michael McNulty We fade in from black and are travelling down a dark country road. Trees with stiff, twisted branches flash by. The accompanying carnival music is beautifully eerie, conjuring images of merry- go-rounds and subtly hinting at the circular existence of the lives of the characters we are about to be introduced to in George Franju’s classic film, Les Yeux Sans Visage. A woman drives a Citröen 2CV, her face a canvas of anxiety. In the back there...