63rd BFI London Film Festival: The Last Black Man in San Francisco Review

Balancing together on the same beat-up skateboard, Jimmie (Jimmie Fails) and his best friend Montgomery (Jonathan Majors) fly through the streets of San Francisco. A symphony of soaring strings and thunderous, belting horns explodes behind them – over the top of which, a soapbox preacher urges that ‘We are these homes! We built them!… This…

63rd BFI London Film Festival: The Dude in Me Review

Body swap comedies are beloved for their bold and ludicrous takes on what happens when opposites switch. Defined by the occurrence of two characters swapping physical states but maintaining their prior personalities, body swap films offer up absurd and fanciful interpretations of what can happen when you take characters and place them in an extreme…

76th Venice International Film Festival: Lingua Franca Review

As the Trump reign rages on, the illegal immigrants are solidly placed among the most marginalized and prosecuted groups in the USA, even though the government’s zero-tolerance policy hasn’t quite quenched the numbers of those seeking a brighter future in what used to be seen as the land of the free. In 2017, the estimate…

76th Venice International Film Festival: Chola (Shadow of Water) Review

Chola is an uncompromising and uncomfortable film that attempts to tackle the alarming sexually oppressed female experience of modern India. Yet, while writer/director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan pretties and dresses up the journey with wide, ambitiously beautiful shots of rural Kerala, the destination is left jarringly raw and brutally morbid.  What starts as a charmingly simple…

76th Venice International Film Festival: Atlantis Review

The year is 2025 – just one year after a war has ended between Ukraine and Russia. A war that has left eastern Ukraine collapsing into a state of disrepair. Hundreds of flooded mines have left local wells and rivers poisoned beyond repair, in a few years this region will be void of any drinking…

Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite Review

Seeing Bong Joon-ho’s work makes one believe time and again that the art of film excellence has not yet disappeared. South Korean director, known for The Host, Okja and Snowpiercer, gifted the film goers with yet another sublime production of his this year: Parasite; a perverse, comical, contemporary yet daunting film that won the Palme…

Juris Kursietis’ Oleg Review

The decision to leave one’s home country is never easy and no one really knows what awaits them out there. Oleg by Juris Kursietis weaves its way along this line, painting a relatable immigrant story of Oleg (Valentin Novopolskij), a Latvian butcher who moves to Belgium in search of a better life. He gets a job…

72nd Cannes Film Festival: Sick, Sick, Sick Review

They say you never forget your first love. In this case, teenager Silvia (Luiza Kosovski) is so adamant to get back her Romeo that she turns to bloody sacrifice and revival voodoo. Brazilian filmmaker Alice Furtado’s feature-length debut is a swirling fever dream of obsession, mourning, and a cold apathy towards the world. Taking a…