Si Sharp
GrimmFest 2011: The Whisperer in Darkness
I was once again fortunate enough to attend some of the Grimm Up North horror film festival in Manchester, now in its third year. An unplanned change in venue meant the event lost some of its atmosphere and variety but luckily the organisers pulled in a particularly impressive line-up of films. First up on the [...]
Potiche
The romantic comedy has had a comeback of sorts over the last few years. We say ‘of sorts’, because whilst every attractive person in Hollywood has starred in a one recently, there’s been a drought of on-screen chemistry and that lack of anything resembling genuine passion is the difference between a ‘Golden Age of romantic [...]
On Tour
Burlesque has become a strangely popular form of entertainment over the last few years. It’s no accident that the renaissance of this tasteful type of titillation has coincided with the rise of freely available hardcore pornography on the internet. It represents a humour and innocence that isn’t found in an increasingly aggressive adult entertainment industry. [...]
We Are What We Are DVD
When Jonathan Swift asserted the logic of cannibalism in his satirical essay A Modest Proposal, he suggested that the poor sell their children to the rich for food. In Jorge Michel Grau’s debut feature-length We Are What We Are the poor have already started eating themselves. This Mexican drama/horror focuses on a family whose principal [...]
In The Land Of The Free DVD
Vadim Jean’s documentary opens with one of the film’s subjects talking over a telephone line in an interview from prison, before the call is interrupted by the automatic operator voice informing us that there’s only 15 seconds left before the line goes dead. Seconds later the calls abruptly ends. It’s a neat trick illustrating the [...]
The Fighter
In the genre of sport movies, the boxing movie is king, the undisputed champion. In fact nowhere are the recurring themes of sport movies more prevalent or integral. Boxing provides expression to the inarticulate, allows the underdog to achieve, invites relationship-fracturing obsession and is rife with politics- all essential ingredients of the genre. David O [...]
GrimmFest 2010: Amer
One of the best films DN caught at Manchester’s Grimm Up North horror film festival was barely a horror film at all, at least not in the modern sense, although it is certainly creepy and horrifying in places. Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s intensely sensual fantasy Amer is one of most beautiful and thought-provoking films [...]
GrimmFest 2010 – The Pack
The third film of our day at Manchester’s Grimm Up North Film Festival was Belgian-French horror hick-flick The Pack (La Meute). When the independent Charlotte (Emilie Dequenne) picks up hitchhiker Max (Benjamin Biolay), they seem to have a lot in common. They both have a similar alternative outlook on life and when they stop at [...]
GrimmFest 2010: Evil: In the Time of Heroes
DN had the pleasure of a five film horror marathon at the Grimm Up North film festival in Manchester. The second film of the day was Yorgos Noussias’ zombie action-comedy Evil: In the Time of Heroes, or To Κακό 2: Στην Eποχή Tων Hρώων to give it its snappy, original title. This sequel to the [...]
The Walking Dead: Episode 1
Zombies, zombies, bloody zombies. We really should be sick of the sight of them. The most annoying thing about them is that regardless of how many zombie films come along people keep on making more of them. On the flipside, every so often someone comes up with a decent take on the shuffling corpse and [...]
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