The Death of Dick Long – GFF 2020 Review Carmen Paddock March 1, 2020 Reviews The less known about The Death of Dick Long in advance, the better. While spoilers should not make or break a good story – and this is such a film – the first half of the film plays much differently if you...
Santiago, Italia – GFF 2020 Review Carmen Paddock March 1, 2020 Reviews The title of Nanni Moretti’s documentary is deliberately unplaceable, evoking a world displaced. After Salvador Allende became the first ever Marxist socialist to be elected in a liberal democracy, the...
What to Watch at the 2020 Glasgow Film Festival Carmen Paddock February 27, 2020 Features, One Off 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...
Dark Waters – Review Carmen Paddock February 26, 2020 Reviews 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...
Eeb Allay Ooo! – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 25, 2020 Reviews 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...
Siberia – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 25, 2020 Reviews 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...
Uppercase Print – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 25, 2020 Reviews 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...
Exile – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 25, 2020 Reviews 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...
All the Dead Ones – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 25, 2020 Reviews 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...
25 Years Later, Safe Remains as Chilling as Ever Carmen Paddock February 25, 2020 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia 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...
The Twentieth Century – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 24, 2020 Reviews 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...
Undine – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 24, 2020 Reviews 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...
First Cow – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 24, 2020 Reviews 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...
The Salt of Tears – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 23, 2020 Reviews 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...
Time to Hunt – Berlinale 2020 Review Carmen Paddock February 23, 2020 Reviews 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...