Husband – Edinburgh Film Festival 2022 Review Scott Wilson August 29, 2022 Reviews While a smart work of autofiction, Husband might be too clever for its own good. Professor Devorah Baum and her spouse Josh Appignanesi are in New York. She has a book to promote, he’s there to care for...
Electric Malady – Edinburgh Film Festival 2022 Review Scott Wilson August 29, 2022 Reviews William, buried under fabrics and hidden away in a room insulated from electromagnetic waves, knows people think he is exaggerating. He suffers from electrosensitivity, a controversial condition in which...
The Justice of Bunny King – Review Scott Wilson February 12, 2022 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in August 2021 as part of our EIFF coverage. "We’re trying to help you". That’s what Bunny King keeps getting told, while she tries to win back her kids after they are...
Stop-Zemlia – EIFF 2021 Review Scott Wilson August 25, 2021 Reviews Everything feels significant the first time it happens. That’s what makes high school such a momentous time, even if nothing particularly exciting is happening. Stop-Zemlia follows a class in the lead up to...
Mad God – EIFF 2021 Review Scott Wilson August 24, 2021 Reviews Stop-motion animation has taken Wallace and Gromit to the moon and given us the eternal love of Jack and Sally. Its limitations are only the imagination, able to create something impossible by any other means....
Pig – EIFF 2021 Review Scott Wilson August 20, 2021 Reviews Robin Feld is battered and bruised. His lone companion in the woods where he lives is a truffle-foraging pig, and she’s been kidnapped by assailants who left Robin bloody on the floor. Without pause – or a...
The Bright Side – EIFF 2021 Review Rafaela Sales Ross August 19, 2021 Reviews Night after night, Kate (Gemma-Leah Deveraux) grabs a cheap beer and walks up on stage at her local pub/comedy club. She shoots one self-deprecating joke after another, before heading to a shabby room in the...
Carmilla – Review Carmen Paddock October 17, 2020 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in June 2019 as part of our Edinburgh Film Festival coverage. Inspired by a pre-Dracula vampire novella, Emily Harris’ Gothic thriller plays fast and loose with its plot...
Scheme Birds – Edinburgh Film Festival 2019 Review Carmen Paddock June 30, 2019 Reviews In Motherwell, Gemma tells us, you end up either ‘locked up or knocked up’. The steel capital of the world died at the hands of Thatcher in the 1980s, and Gemma recounts how the skies turned grey with dust...
Bittersweet Symphony – Edinburgh Film Festival 2019 Review Carmen Paddock June 29, 2019 Reviews Rich people problems are one of cinema’s perennial favourites; when done well, the results are last year’s Crazy Rich Asians or Joanna Hogg’s upcoming The Souvenir. When done sloppily, self-indulgently,...
Skin – Edinburgh Film Festival 2019 Review Carmen Paddock June 29, 2019 Reviews There is an argument to be made that white nationalist redemption narratives focus the pain and trauma on the aggressors rather than the communities they terrorise, making them at best valueless and at worst...
Firecrackers – Edinburgh Film Festival 2019 Review Carmen Paddock June 29, 2019 Reviews What happens when youthful dreams crash into reality? In Firecrackers, writer and director Jasmin Mozaffari follows Lou and Chantal, two teenage Canadians who have saved every penny from their janitorial jobs...
We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Edinburgh Film Festival Review Carmen Paddock June 27, 2019 Reviews Based on Shirley Jackson’s final novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle never leaves the perspective of 18 year old Merricat (Taissa Farmiga), who lives reclusively with her older sister Constance...
Love Type D – Edinburgh Film Festival 2019 Review Carmen Paddock June 27, 2019 Reviews What if being dumped wasn't your fault? This is the belief that Frankie (Maeve Dermody) hangs onto after her ex-boyfriend’s precocious eleven-year-old (Rory Stroud) – who was also employed to dump her –...
The Flip Side – Edinburgh Film Festival 2019 Review Carmen Paddock June 27, 2019 Reviews At the opening of Marion Pilowsky’s new rom-com, Ronnie (Emily Taheny) and Henry (Eddie Izzard) are getting cosy on an Adelaide film set – she is the caterer and he is the star, and they are going to move...