Never Let Me Go
A slow-burning nightmare, as a strange boarding school in a timeless limbo England raises children for a sinister purpose.
Review by Mark Stafford
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Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
The spectacle of hundreds of naked old men being herded like wolves up a snowy mountainside is not one I’ll forget in a hurry.
Review by Mark Stafford
Carlos
We’re in a 70s radical chic world, a jet-setting, chain-smoking brown leather and knitwear milieu where radical politics are discussed in hotel bars, and Kalashnikovs are sexier than Fender Stratocasters.
Review by Mark Stafford
Enter the Void
You can’t fault Gaspar Noé’s ambition, give him that: even if the audio-visual overkill, gutter-level mise en scí¨ne and sheer unpleasantness repulse you, not many filmmakers attempt to kill you, take you through hell on earth and get you reincarnated in 135 minutes.
Review by Mark Stafford
The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
The film’s selling point is a nasty idea - that a mad surgeon, Dr Heiter (Dieter Laser), will capture three human subjects and sew them in a row, mouth to anus to mouth, so that they effectively become one creature with one digestive tract.
Review by Mark Stafford
Double Take: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Earlier plans to play the dialogue with Robert as Ferrara and me as Herzog are abandoned as Robert fears the substance abuse would kill him, and I fear that I can’t take a bullet with the required sang-froid.
Review by Mark Stafford and Robert Chilcott
Lebanon
Based on writer-director Samuel Maoz’s experiences, it’s set during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, (as seen in Waltz with Bashir) and we the audience are trapped with an ill-prepared and uneasy crew of four inside an armoured mobile box.
Review by Mark Stafford
Micmacs
Jean Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs is a death-by-chocolate layer cake of a film, stuffed with visual invention, intricate set pieces and elaborate machinery.
Review by Mark Stafford
Comic Strip Review: Whirlpool
Blackmail, murder, brutality, manipulation: Otto Preminger’s noir world view is at its darkest and most compelling in Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) and Whirlpool (1949).
Comic strip review by Mark Stafford
RIDER ON THE RAIN
René Clément’s film comes from 1970, near the tail end of a lost age of Euro-cinema, the films that used to pepper the TV schedules in the 70s and 80s and then slowly disappeared: not art-house, they would be described as stylish in the listings, boasting chic clothes, swish locations and sharp camerawork.
Review by Mark Stafford