Author Carmen Paddock

Glasgow Film Festival tends to slip under the radar: it comes immediately after the Berlinale, often coincides with or follows the Oscars, and tends to host mainly UK and Scottish premieres of films that have...

The opening scene of Todd Haynes’ latest feature immediately evokes Jaws, as a group of giggling, beer-fueled teenagers trespass for a midnight swim. The killer in the water, however, is not quite as easy to...

Monkey bites can be fatal for humans. Do not indulge them. Do not feed them. This sign greets Anjani (Shardul Bhardwaj) at his new job as a professional monkey repeller. Having newly relocated from the...

Abel Ferrara’s latest film blends a quintessential man vs. nature struggle and the age-old search for life’s meaning with a heavy dose of metaphysics. Siberia, however, does nothing narratively or...

Hybrid documentaries often use their newly-filmed footage to advance narrative drama in the absence of its initial existence; Radu Jude’s Uppercase Print, on the contrary, takes a decidedly uncinematic...

The most effective horror comes from the unknown. In Visar Morina’s dramatic thriller, Xhafer is a Serbian pharmaceutical engineer who now lives in Germany with his wife and three children. One day, he finds...

Brazil, 1899. Slavery has been abolished for 11 years. The women of the Soares family find their old plantation lifestyle out of reach, and their former slaves are struggling to find a place in the new...

Today’s news often leaves little to be happy about. Spikes in carbon emissions from rainforests and permafrost have shaken previous climate models, leading experts to predict we have far less time than...

As the title suggests, The Twentieth Century opens at the close of the previous one. A young elite is groomed and ready to ascend the ranks of Canadian politics – and not even his most ridiculous perversions...

Anyone familiar with European folklore will have an idea of where Christian Petzold’s latest feature may end up. But as this modern fairy tale opens, Undine is not a water spirit – yet. She is a state...

Some films need no special tricks or thrills to captivate, and Kelly Reichardt’s latest is a near faultless example. Following a loner cook and a Chinese immigrant who form a loving alliance in their travels...

It is still dark when Jane (Julia Garner) gets in a taxi outside her modest flat. She dozes when she can on the ride into New York and arrives at an unlit office. Before her colleagues arrive, the lights are...

The least believable part of Philippe Garrel’s latest film is that anyone involved has ever been in a relationship. The Salt of Tears follows Luc, a young carpentry student moving from the countryside to...

There is a scene just before the halfway point in Time To Hunt, Yoon Sung-hyun’s latest heist horror, that signals a seismic shift in the film’s rulebook. While not necessarily a twist by virtue of the...

Biopics are tricky; there is a balance to strike between comprehensively covering the subject's entire life and picking a dramatically satisfying theme and tone. Hidden Away reaches for the former but brings...