Author: The Reviews Hub - Film

Director: Amanda Richards Seeking to find a space alongside other cult favourites such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Phantom of the Paradise, and Repo! The Genetic Opera, this new independent feature written and directed by Amanda Richards, finds its way to the Raindance Film Festival. Whiskey Williams (played by Richards) is a singer aiming for stardom, but derailed when she loses her driving licence after being caught masturbating behind the wheel – her antics go viral, but her heart remains at home in her local bar, where a variety of low-lifes and messed up people meet to drown their…

Writers: Tõnis Pill and Laura Raud  Director: Tõnis Pill Is it still too soon to replicate that plastic bag scene from Sam Mendes’s 1999 American Beauty? Tõnis Pill doesn’t seem to think so, and bookends his film about a friendship between a 13-year-old boy and a man with learning difficulties with shots of a plastic bag caught in the wind above a small Estonian town. One plastic bag may be regarded as a misfortune, but two look like carelessness. But the rest of Pill’s film, shot in rich saturated colour, isn’t bad at all. Derek Leheste puts in a finely…

Writer: Christopher Hampton, based on the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos Director: Marianne Elliott Memorably, Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of the eighteenth-century novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, was first staged by the RSC some 40 years ago. It featured astonishing central performances by Lindsay Duncan and Alan Rickman as Madame de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, the sophisticated former lovers who titillate one another by plotting the corruption of two high-born young women. The then youthful actors Lesley Manville and Juliet Stevenson played Cécile de Volanges and the recently married Madame de Tourvel. Lesley Manville, in this new production directed…

Writer: William Shakespeare adapted by Daryl Chase Director: Daryl Chase Shakespeare’s Scottish play moves to London’s East End in Daryl Chase’s modern-day adaptation of Macbeth. On an East End sink estate known as Scotland rival gangs battle for supremacy. Macbeth (Shaq B. Grant) with the assistance of his best friend Banquo (Harrison Collett) wins the territory for gang leader Duncan (Joe Sims) who promptly offers him promotion. However, Macbeth is not satisfied having had a supernatural promise he will replace Duncan- which his ambitious wife Lady Macbeth (Aoife Smyth) is determined should be fulfilled. Director Daryl Chase does not simply…

Writer and director: Álex Barragán and Diego Barragán At a key point in Jardines del Bosque a character remarks how looking back on childhood brings to mind how much, and how little, Mexico has changed over the years. The remark plays over a newsreel montage of key events and, although the average viewer might recognise the Covid pandemic, the images are most likely to be best appreciated by people familiar with the country’s problems with gangland violence and history of political upheaval. But perhaps co-authors/directors Álex Barragán and Diego Barragán are making the point the influence of childhood can both…

Writers and Directors: Matt Michalik and Rupert Evans If watching a group of men knock the living daylights out of each other for 70 minutes, all filmed in black and white by dizzying handheld cameras, is your bag, then Bloodlust is for you. For the rest of us, perhaps not. Receiving its world premiere in the Horror Strand at this year’s Raindance, Matt Michalik and Rupert Evans’ film is undeniably stylish, but with minimal plot, clunky dialogue and repetitive scenes, the violence – and there is a lot of it – comes across as gratuitous. And there are so many…

Writers: Pierce Csurgo, Eric J. Kinsey and Joseph Zentil Director: Joseph Zentil Joseph Zentil’s intelligent and unfussy feature debut can be viewed in two ways. Born to Lose is not only a classy crime thriller about a young drug dealer in over his head in Western Kentucky, but it’s also an interrogation of what it means to be American today. Many of the characters spout versions of a materialistic American Dream in which money is the be-all and end-all, ignoring the fact that they are trapped by circumstances beyond their control. Some blindly believe in everything America stands for; others…

Writers: Hideo Jojo and Jiro Sato from the latter’s manga series Director: Hideo Jojo Nameless has just under a ninety-minute running time and behaves like a movie in a hurry. Violent, garish action is pushed forward while nuance and characterisation are nudged to the side. The police are driven to extremes when violence breaks out in a diner. Film footage from security cameras shows a lone attacker stabbing people indiscriminately apparently with his bare hand- a knife is not visible. This provokes one of the investigating officers to wonder whether the attack might be linked to strange events which arose…