Author: The Reviews Hub - Film

Director: Paul Holbrook Writter: Laura Bayston Steeped in shade, Old Windows centres on an encounter between two strangers. We are in South East London, and cafe owner Kerrie (played by Laura Bayston) is saying goodbye to her last customer of the day. As Kerrie surveys an empty till, we can observe that the cafe has seen better days. The cafe’s history – West Ham kit in pride of place, photos and posters up on the walls – is decades old and virtually untouched. It is not immediately obvious when we are, and director Paul Holbrook’s use of sepia plays on…

Writer: Naomi McDougall Jones Director: Meredith Edwards Death and taxes come together quite literally in Naomi McDougall Jones’ provocatively titled romcom Bite Me as a young vampire finds her exemption status questioned by the IRS. Dispelling a lot of vampire myths – no fangs, going out in daylight and only drinking donor blood to fix an energy deficiency – it may have a few twists, but McDougall-Jones’s film directed by Meredith Edwards is ultimately a cosy and very traditional example of its genre, as two lonely outsiders find, lose and find love again against the odds. Sarah is a determinedly…

Writer and Director:  Nicholas Ashe Bateman There should be a prize for making it to the end of Nicholas Ashe Bateman’s film which is as mystifying and as silly as its title. Set, presumably, in the future after a climate change event where the weather is now always hot and humid, people try to escape the heat on a ship that takes wild horses to a cooler temperate place. The Wanting Mare is as pretentious as it sounds. Why they take the horses to arctic temperatures is not explained, and it seems fairly unimportant to the main narrative, which instead…

Writers: Lau Ho-Leung and Liang Hong Director: Lau Ho-Leung Caught in Time, written by director Lau Ho-Leung with Liang Hong, is based upon the real-life story of robber Zhang Jun, who was dubbed “China’s number one outlaw” and said to have killed or injured around 50 people during the 1990s. Detective Zhong Cheng (Wang Qianyuan) has a poor first day on his new job. He interrupts a robbery by the notorious Eagle Gang but is overpowered and, at the whim of their leader Zhang Sun (Daniel Wu) nick- named The Falcon, dressed as a gang member, and left for his colleagues…

Writer and Director: Alessio Della Valle Running on adrenaline, Alessio Della Valle’s American Night is an art-heist thriller that promises a great deal. The film is written and directed by Della Vale, with a starry cast including Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Emile Hirsch and Jeremy Piven. American Night explores the underbelly of the New York art world, focusing on mob boss incumbent, Michael Rubino (Emile Hirsch). A fan of contemporary art, Rubino is secretly an artist himself. On the death of his father, Rubino wants his inheritance – Andy Warhol’s Pink Marilyn which hung in the family home when he was…

Directors:  Barbora Chalupová and Vít Klusák In Barbora Chalupová and Vít Klusák new documentary Caught in the Net, you can only admire the bravery of actors Sabina Dlouhá, Anežká Pithartová and Terez Těžká who after answering a cast call pose as 12-year-old girls and go online to lure potential sex offenders through online chat, video calls and eventually 21 face-to- face meetings. With three months of preparation, and profiles online for just 10 days, over 2500 men got in touch and Caught in the Net is the important but horrifying result of their work. Based in the Czech Republic, documentary…

Writer and Director: David Beton Billed as an intense, high octane thriller, Confession is built on a simple narrative premise. A gunman – wounded but still dangerous – bursts into a Boston church. The priest is the only person in the building. With the action played out in real time, the gunman urges that he has a confession to make. He is here not for vengeance, but absolution. Written and directed by David Beton, this is a one-location drama. The film is packed into an 80-minute time frame, and plays with the audience’s preconceptions as the story takes a number…

Writers: Roseanne Liang and Max Landis Director: Roseanne Liang In the closing credits of Shadow in the Cloud director Roseanne Liang offers archive footage of women pilots in the Allied Air Forces. Given the film’s plucky heroine, should the film be read as a tribute to all the women who overcame sexism to play vital military roles in World War II? That wouldn’t make much sense of the film’s particularly nasty gremlin. This is no Stephen Spielberg cute mischief-maker, but a repellent creature, a large and steel-clawed, hairless rat with a distorted bat’s face and hideous fangs. Liang and fellow writer…