Sisu.

For anyone who was disappointed at the mundane levels of violent retribution unleashed by Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards, welcome to Nazi mayhem Finnish style, courtesy of writer/director Jalmari Helander. And unless you move a Dolmio factory to Arizona this is probably the nearest you’ll get to seeing a spaghetti western this year. It begins with a…

Master Gardener

Paul Shrader completes his late flowering directorial trilogy (see also First Reformed and The Card Counter) with an unexpected film set in the grounds of an erstwhile southern plantation, the family seat of The Haverhills. Here we find Norma (Sigourney Weaver) haughtily presiding over her household and the spectacular formal gardens which are the focus…

Beau is Afraid

And so he should be. Holy Shit! If you’ve ever worried that there might be something nasty lurking in the attic then this is almost certainly not the film for you. (little hint – it’s a gigantic cock and balls with a rictus smile and a lethal ejaculatory harpoon) But for everyone else, I would…

Pamfir

Was drawn to this by an absolutely banging trailer and whilst it didn’t disappoint it never quite hit the highest notes. The film is set on the Ukrainian side of the Carpathian Mountains close to the Romanian border, although some of the shooting had to be hastily relocated outside the country following Putin’s invasion. It…

Cairo Conspiracy

Director Tarik Saleh is an Egyptian who was banned from his native country in 2015 for political dissent, so he was forced to shoot most of this footage in Istanbul. He says that Cairo Conspiracy is just a story he wanted to tell and shouldn’t be taken as a political parable, but I think he…

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

A film which it is virtually impossible to rant or rave about. It was all right…just about. Not mawkish but mordant. Not comfortable but comforting. Not insipid but never inspiring. The worrying thing for me about The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was that I own the exact same pair of M&S shoes that Jim…

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Based on the book of the same name by Andreas Malm, director Daniel Goldhaber serves up a fast paced, yet thoughtful, environmental call-to-arms and cunningly disguises it as a heist movie. It posits that since conventional measures have demonstrably failed to halt the damaging effects of fossil fuels, now is the time to countenance more…