Reviews

Not normally too interested in remakes of films in other languages, but Artist director Hazanavicius being involved got me interested, and glad it did. There's a huge amount of fun to be had here - it is as much comedy as horror - with a great cast & director enjoying playing with the B movie concept of it all.

The opening chunk drops you right into the film being shot in a disused building, deliberately wrong-footing the viewer (also leaves you wondering why the French characters are all using Japanese names), only for the later two thirds of the film to show what we had been watching and put it all into context. It's a nice way to approach it and felt quite satisfying (to me, anyway). It may not be genius, but it is fun - make a good pizza night bit of viewing on a weekend.

Caught this as part of the 2022 Edinburgh International Film Festival - the programmers were keen to share it, describing it as part of a new wave of confident film-making coming out of Africa.

It plays quite nicely with some signifiers - at some point our main trio look like evil mercs who kill anyone for money, but other scenes show them in a totally different light - and while it is happy to indulge in some Tarantino-influenced action it is also unafraid to touch on darker elements like the vile use of child soldiers. Very stylish, cool - good late night movie, and took a few turns I wasn't expecting in the narrative.

Caught the UK debut of this at the 75th Edinburgh International Film Festival (director told us it is getting general UK release in November 2022, think Oct for North America). It is a coming of age story - I was thinking Stand By Me only for the director to tell the festival crowd after the screening that Stand By Me was indeed an influence. Although many of the beats of a teenage coming of age are there, all tropes we've seen before, it is well done and it really brings out the emotions (be prepared to blink away tears a couple of times), while the artwork is lovely, especially some of the big landscape moments in the forest, a night sky or waterfalls. Lovely, warm and emotional.

Wordless French documentary essentially following a year through the seasons for a two hundred year old oak tree, and all the life that happens on it, from birds and squirrels and insects in its branches to wood mice living in its roots and fungi below the earth, to deer, coypu and boars around it. Great use of sound (breeze through leaves of a tree has to be one of the nicest sounds in the world), this is one to see on the big screen so you can immerse yourself into it. Introduction at the Edinburgh International Film Festival noted that it has been a huge hit in France, accounting for half a million tickets.

Caught this at the 75th EIFF, very clever and inventive piece of micro-budget SF, presented almost as documentary using footage discovered in old movie reel tins in a deserted house in England, purporting to document a pair of eccentric sisters created Lola, a machine which can intercept. Broadcasts from the future. It starts as fun, but as the war comes to Britain, Lola's trajectory changes radically.

Some of the film was shot on period cameras, developed in a rougher way to give the impression of damaged old film reels, while other footage uses newsreels, edited to include characters (a la Forrest Gump) or events, while the story also brings into play the nature of personal responsibility and the potential consequences of interfering with history. In many ways it reminded me of Primer, now a cult film, which I first saw at the same film festival years ago.