Momma’s Boys (and Girls): The deviant offspring of excessively loving mothers

To mark the release of the brilliant psycho-sexual drama Dogtooth, we look at momma’s boys (and girls) with articles on White Heat, The Piano Teacher, Psycho and an interview with director Yorgos Lanthimos.

In the new cinema releases, we review Todd Solondz’s follow-up to Happiness, Life during Wartime, Mamoru Oshii’s wonderful The Sky Crawlers, Borgesian fantasy Double Take, Brit kidnap thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed and Australian teen-lovers-on-the-run tale Samson and Delilah. We also have a feature on Sergei Paradjanov.

In the DVDs, we look at beautiful Czech classic Valley of the Bees and Henri-George Clouzot’s Inferno, we have a fantastic comic strip review of Dr Jeckyll and Sister Hyde and a feature on Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell. We also look at new filmic PS3 game Heavy Rain and at the innovative space cowboy series Stingray Sam and we report on South by South West.

We have interviews with Todd Solondz and Momoko Ando, whose film Kakera is now getting a UK release. In the Short Cuts we have a feature on the much loved Flatpack Festival. In Alter Ego, author Craig Silvey is the Fantastic Mr Fox and in the Film Jukebox psychedelic hard rockers Dead Meadow tell us about their favourite movies. And you can read the winning review of Careful in our film writing competition.

PODCASTS: Body and Souls: In the latest Electric Sheep podcast, we’re looking at two films by female directors that deal with issues of absence and loss. Alex Fitch talks to director Sophie Barthes about her film Cold Souls, a Kaufman-esque science fiction comedy about soul-trafficking starring Paul Giamatti, and to Mirjam Van Veelan about her documentary Megumi, about the kidnap of a Japanese girl – Megumi Yokota – in 1977 by North Korea (with thanks to The Barbican for arranging the interview with Mirjam).