Billed as science fiction but bearing closer relation to the work of Chris Marker and even David Attenborough than Spielberg or Lucas, the film utilises footage shot on the space shuttle STS-43, along with haunting images photographed beneath the polar ice cap, all loosely held together with a rambling, delusional voiceover by actor Brad Dourif.
Review by Tom Huddleston
Having trashed his hotel room in the throes of this dream, Berlot is rescued by the ‘Marquis’, whose anachronistic costume and tendency to gales of insane laughter go largely unremarked by those around him. At this point, there are promising signs: the Marquis’ coach and horses trundling preposterously along the motorway is nice.
Review by Stephen Thomson
From the very first frame, Masumura’s Blind Beast is as visually arresting as it is morally dubious, and it doesn’t let up pursuing its own preposterous logic for a second from then on in. What more can you ask of a film?
Review by Stephen Thomson
This legendary silent film, much admired by the Surrealists, is a spellbinding brew of ingredients that don’t naturally mix, at least not in modern cinema. Combining the scholarly and the outlandish, the fact-based and the supernatural, Häxan is simultaneously a documentary on witchcraft and a collection of wildly fanciful visions.
Review by Virginie Sélavy
The truth is that Bad Timing, billed as ‘a terrifying love story’, is an uncomfortable experience filled with pain, obsession and bitterness. And, with its alienated characters, fractured timeframe and plenty of sex, quintessential Roeg cinema.
Review by Ben Cobb
After years of disappointing transfers which drained the original print of colour and used optical fuzzing to cover over the film’s frequent recourse to nudity, Jodorowsky’s legendary third feature gets a UK DVD release and we can finally experience, albeit on the small screen, the glory of his first foray into cinemascope.
Review by Jeff Hilson
Forty years later Fando & Lis is still as inflammatory as cinema can get. It’s a scream, a punch in the guts, an eye-gouging journey through what looks like nothing less than the lowest circles of Dante’s Inferno.
Review by Virginie Sélavy
Quentin Tarantino’s main gift to the world of cinema in the last year or two was the wretched Hostel, of which the best I can say is that it spared me any nagging ambivalence by marrying political ineptitude with perfect aesthetic nullity. I mention this at the head of a review of Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill because, when he is not frittering away his credit by endorsing incompetent horror flicks, Tarantino is re-building his stock by referencing cult classics whose relative unavailability safeguards him from embarrassing comparisons. Until now…
Review by Stephen Thomson
Some cultural commentators will automatically applaud anything presented as ‘youth’ or ‘street’ for fear of looking like old farts. This has very much worked in the favour of Kourtrajme (French street slang for ‘short film’), an urban collective of young film-makers, musicians and graphic designers, to which Kim Chapiron, director of Satan, belongs.
Review by Virginie Sélavy
Just over a year ago the most riveting debut since Steven Spielberg’s Duel was released in the UK to great press acclaim but little public notice. 13 (Tzameti) was the first feature by young French-educated Georgian director Gela Babluani, and against the depressing background of a French cinema determined to be as vapid as Hollywood, it felt like a jolt of electricity.
Review by Virginie Sélavy