The first image of György Pálfi’s Hen – an extended close-up on a chicken’s cloaca as she lays an egg – might take the prize for the most arresting opening shot of 2025. It’s certainly a sight most cinephiles won’t have seen before, and there’s plenty of them to come in the Greek director’s poultry picture, which take a bird’s … Read more
In his controversial but undeniably significant smash hit ‘Stan’, Eminem relayed the story of an obsessive fan who would do anything to get the attention of his idol. His deteriorating mental health – conveyed through a series of increasingly worrying letters to Eminem – eventually led him to threats, then acts, of violence, and even some … Read more
Sophy Romvari’s movies are slippery things. The Canadian filmmaker already has something of a cult following among very-online cinephiles despite only just having made her debut feature. The film, Blue Heron, is a sun-bleached portrait of a dysfunctional family of six, told through a series of hazy pre-millennial memories following their migration from Hungary. The territory isn’t exactly new for … Read more
At a Davos-like gathering inside a cavernous marble mine, global elites in dinner dress enjoy a tweezer-precise amuse-bouche and a performance of Cerrone’s all-time Italodisco banger “Supernature” by Charli XCX, when the performance is interrupted by a cadre of pagan eco-warriors led by Anya Taylor-Joy with white Scandi sniper suit, assault rifle, and red headband over Greta Thunberg bangs, striding … Read more
It’s a truism to point out that trees, plants, rivers and all flora and fauna contain as much lifeforce as any human. Fortunately, Hungarian director, Ildikó Enyedi, takes this perspective as a jump off point for a sophisticated if meandering meditation on how developing a shared language (between humans and the natural world, as well as between our fellow … Read more
Elsewhere, McElwee films old friends who starred in his earlier films, such as Charleen Swansea, a poetry teacher and friend of Ezra Pound who now has dementia and can’t ever remember making Charleen or Sherman’s March with Ross. “Things just disappear,” Charleen says of her memories. She remarks that she thinks the camera he uses is … Read more
Anti-heroes make for compelling subjects, particularly in a world as unjust as the one we live in, and 1970s American cinema has absolutely no shortage of them. Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire revisits the era by dramatising an infamous 1977 hostage stand-off staged by Tony Kiritsis, who rigged mortgage broker Richard Hall – who he … Read more
Guillermo del Toro first voiced his dream of making a “faithful Miltonian tragedy” version of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ back in 2007, just after announcing himself to the world at large with the haunting fairytale Pan’s Labyrinth. By that point he already had six feature films under his belt, but it was his spellbinding story of … Read more
There was a time in the mid-00s when the prospect of a new film by Italy’s newest favourite son, Paolo Sorrentino, was a cause for celebration. Titles such as The Consequences of Love (2004), The Family Friend (2006) and Il Divo (2008) heralded a mercurial talent, one who might finally be able to hold the mantle of Italian auteur giants … Read more