Broken Beak - Raindance

Courtesy of Raindance

Folktales are prime subjects for horror films across the globe. Every country has stories from the past that could be used to paint an image of the present. Myths and monsters are perfect to scare and set an uneasy atmosphere, even more so if these creatures take hold of someone in reality. Broken Beak easily sets the stage for something bizarre and deeply disturbing. Though the cinematography in most places is visually compelling, and the central performance from Briar Rose is commendable, Broken Beak isn’t quite the folktale inspired horror film you expect it to be.

Full review over at Filmhounds

Kraken

Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films

 

Marine biologist Johanne is asked to investigate a salmon farm in a Norwegian fjord after the area has experienced a series of odd events; fish jumping on land on mass, damaged fishing equipment and more recently missing people. Once at the salmon farm, Johanne discovers that they have been using a sonic device to de-lice the fish but at a dangerously high frequency. Unfortunately, the damage is already done. The sonic wave has also woken up something else.

Full review over at Filmhounds.

Julie Keeps Quiet

 

Julie is one of the most promising players at an elite tennis academy. When one of the coaches falls under investigation for inappropriate conduct and is suspended, the players are encouraged to speak up. However, Julie, remains quiet.

Premiering at Cannes 2024, chosen as Belgium’s entry to the Oscar’s but not nominated, co-produced by the legendary filmmakers, the Dardenne brothers, Julie Keeps Quiet already speaks loudly as a film to be taken seriously. Coupled with the subject matter where there is a lot to be said, its interesting to see director and co-writer Leonardo Van Dijl, take a different approach. Van Dijl delves beneath the surface of Julie’s quiet and often serene exterior, channelling her emotions into her tennis and keeping her dialogue to a minimum.

Full review over at Filmhounds.

The Balconettes - London Film Festival

 

Mixing genres in film is always an exciting approach, especially if the subject is darker and needs a fresh take. Director and co-writer Noémie Merlant said that she had originally set out to write a love story but ended up with The Balconettes. Though, she also pointed out, there is a love story within the film, one of female friendship. At its core, the film broaches a darker subject, but in order not to sink the characters into despair, comedy with a bit of supernatural weirdness balances the story and ultimately creates that fresh take that is needed. 

During a heatwave, three friends in living in Marseille find themselves cooped up in their apartment. Across the way, they observe a mysterious handsome man. Through a few dramatic and comedic errors, the three of them find themselves in the man’s apartment for drinks. But later that night, one of the friends returns home covered in blood and the three women find themselves living out a nightmare.

Full review over at Filmhounds.

The Quiet Maid - Raindance Film Festival

 

There has been many a story portrayed in film involving the classes and the issues that come with the divide, the characters end up being the defining factor to make each story stand out. Having had its UK premiere at Raindance 2024, The Quiet Maid was nominated for Best Debut Director and Best Debut Feature.  The film boasts an enticing lead, Paula Grimaldo who is captivating even when completing menial tasks. She went on to win Best Performance at Raindance. The Quiet Maid is not a thriller, nor is it a straightforward drama. An observational character study would be more accurate as with Ana herself, there is more beneath the surface than what we are presented with.

Working for an upper-class family on the north-eastern coast of Spain, quiet Colombian domestic maid Ana, balances her duties with finding ways to also enjoy the Summer.

Full review over at Filmhounds.

Everyone Loves Touda - Cannes Film Festival

 

Chasing dreams and wanting more, a better life is an age-old tale. Films such as these can feel predictable as soon as the tone is set. As an audience we become hopeful along with the dreamer of the story and even though we can guess how things will end, we still cling onto the hope that this character somehow succeeds. In Everyone Loves Touda, we enter the world of hopeful dreamer Touda and share in her journey, but we know all too well how this story ends.

Touda, is a Sheikha, a traditional Moroccan performer who are empowered by the songs of fierce female poets who lived before. Trying to carve out an existence in her rural town, performing each night in darkened bars to drunken men, Touda wants more from life. Deciding to take a chance, she moves to Casablanca, the big city, in the hope of being recognised as a true artist and securing a place for her son at a school that accommodates deaf children.

Full review over at Filmhounds.

Beautiful Beings

 

Following up on his 2016 feature film debut, Heartstone, writer and director Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson returns with Beautiful Beings, a story about boyhood and friendship, tilting on the edge of destruction and ultimately a vicious act of revenge. 

After being hospitalised from bullies at school, lonely Balli is tentatively befriended by the understanding Addi, the sarcastic Siggi and the short-tempered Konni. Together they carve out an existence, trying to have fun and escaping their home lives. But after Konni’s temper gets the group into trouble with older and more violent people and with the return of Balli’s abusive stepfather, the boys have to decide if revenge and retaliation is really the way to live.

Full review over at Filmhounds HERE.

Holy Spider

 
Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider caused a stir when it premiered at Cannes 2022, especially being nominated for the Palm d’Or and Zar Amir Ebrahimi winning Best Actress. But the story itself was the main reason the film caught the audiences’ attention. Based on real events surrounding the serial killer Saeed Hanaei who murdered 16 women from 2000 to 2001 in Mashhad, Iran.

Full review over at Filmhounds HERE.

Driving Mum - Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

 

The journey of self-discovery, acceptance, adventure and ridding one’s self of the past comes in all shapes, sizes and lengths. Usually, a physical journey accompanies those on a spiritual one too. The death of a loved one is often a trigger and can lead to difficult truths, realisations, resentment and most painfully, regret. The Icelandic/Estonian co production of Driving Mum contains all of the above, filmed solemnly in black and white, journeying from the West to the South of Iceland. This story of grief is at times, funny and heart-warming and have you ponder events in your past, just like Jon and his dead mother in the back seat.

Full review over at Filmhounds HERE.

Sissy - Fantasia Film Festival

There have been a stream of films and TV shows about the darker side of social media and influencers. Treading lightly on certain issues and how trying to keep up appearances burns people out and questioning their honesty. This has taken form in various genres and on the surface, Sissy could easily be lumped in with the rest of the horror and dark comedy blends out there. Luckily, Sissy offers an off kilter and simpler approach to ‘the other side of influencers’ and puts a spotlight on a fractured character that has never healed from childhood bullying trauma. It’s twisted and fantastically executed, with the ray of deadly sunshine that is Aisha Dee, our Cecilia aka ‘Sissy’. 

 

Cecilia is a self-proclaimed mental health advocate, in other words, an influencer. One day she bumps into her old childhood best friend Emma who has she hasn’t seen in years. After a drunken night and wanting to reconnect, Emma invites Cecilia to her intimate hen do. But has also invited Alex, Cecilia’s bully. Old wounds are reopened and Alex, jealous of Cecilia’s success and unwilling to forgive her for past events, the weekend takes a surprisingly deadly turn as Cecilia’s already fractured facade begins to break.

Full review at Filmhounds HERE.

Incredible But True - Fantasia Film Festival

 
The simplest of ideas can become the most complex stories. Delving deeper into an idea that on the surface seems bizarre and too ridiculous to comprehend, along comes Quentin Dupleux with another strange tale that literally no one thought of making. Dupleux’s films are that of fantasy and other genres mixed in bottle and sprayed out to its’ audiences that they are a perfect fit for Fantasia Film Festival. Incredible But True is another success in this writer and director’s catalogue of the strange an unusual.

Middle aged couple, Alain and Marie’s lives are completely altered when they buy a house in a quiet suburban neighbourhood after discovering the powers of a hatch in the basement. Warned upon moving in, the hatch allows you to travel 12 hours into the future and also makes you 3 days younger. While Marie becomes obsessed with the hatch, Alain tries to live a normal life. Alongside this issue with the house, Alain’s friend and boss Gerard, has problems of his own, specifically with his technology enhanced genitals.

Full review over at Filmhounds HERE.

Benedetta

 
Controversy and Paul Verhoeven are familiar with each other, whether it’s for a reveal in a shot that is talked about for years later, or for one of the most loved ‘so bad its good’ films made or for his subject matters of his later films. His latest, Benedetta, didn’t escape controversy when the film was selected for a festival in the US and the local Catholic group protested it. Even before all of this excitement, the premise alone attracted speculation and if we’re all being honest, titillation. But as always Verhoeven tricks us with this smoke screen of expectation that there will be something to shock us when in fact he delivers a thrilling story that happens to involve a lesbian nun who claimed to have visions of Jesus.

Full review over at Filmhounds HERE. 

Nico - BFI Flare

 

Understated stories where the plot is minimal, the characters are few but the message and heart of the film speaks volumes don’t tend to get as much attention. A story like Nico is one that has probably happened to many people and to see it on screen portrayed in such a way is heart-breaking but it is a story that needs to be told. 

 

Nico is a free-spirited geriatric nurse living in Berlin. She spends her free time drinking and partying with her best friend Rosa. One night, after attending a party in the park, Nico is victim to a brutal xenophobic attack, leaving her unconscious and later hospitalised. Once back on her feet she is determined to not be left in that position again so she takes up karate lessons. But as she becomes more involved with learning this new art, she distances herself from Rosa and even her clients notice she is not the same happy and cheerful as woman anymore.

Full review over at Filmhounds HERE. 

Cop Secret - BFI Flare

We all know the genre action thriller featuring two cops or agents, working together to bring down the powerful violent criminal wreaking havoc through a city. We know it so well from years of Hollywood spinning out these stories time over time. Rarely do we get a taste from outside the studios and from around the globe. Iceland may seem like an unlikely location for such a film, usually exporting low key comedies and art house films. But Cop Secret, based on a fake trailer, directed by an ex-Footballer, is a hilarious brilliantly underplayed action-comedy romance.

Full review over at Filmhounds HERE.

Parallel Mothers

 

The story and setting for Parallel Mothers all feel familiar territory for Pedro Almodovar who has garnered a career on his melodramas focusing on women, mothers, lovers and usually involving a devastating secret. The colours red and black are heavily featured throughout, as well as the use kitchens and food, all staples of his films in this genre. After his very personal film, Pain and Glory, this film is a step back to what the director does best.  

Full review HERE

Dial Code Santa Claus

3615 code Père Noël, aka Deadly Games, aka Dial Code Santa Claus, aka Hide and Freak, aka Game Over. The many named horror thriller about a boy genius vs a psychotic Santa Claus who play cat and mouse in a mansion gained cult status after its brief 1990 release in France. Having only seen the light of day once again with a Blu-ray release, now 4K, from American label Vinegar Syndrome, now more people can enjoy this bizarre Christmas film and add it to the pile to watch each year. 

Full article at Filmhounds HERE.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

 

Apart from the very explicit beginning which is surprising for a second until you realise it is there for context, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, doesn’t set out to shock the audience. This is writer and director Radu Jude’s interpretation of how society on the whole behaves and thinks. Although set in Romania, it feels as if this could have been anywhere. 

Full review over at Filmhounds HERE.

Devi

 

The Goddness Kali has been seen as that of a destructor, a master of death but she is also the mother of all beings who protects and nurturers her children. Once described as dark and terrible mother and worshiped by questionable people in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But this story is no gimmicky action blockbuster, this is a strange and at times soulful look at a what happens when irrational beliefs take over and destroy a family.

Full review over at Filmhounds HERE.

Money Has Four Legs - BFI London Film Festival

 

In this story of a filmmaker who is literally at breaking point in every aspect of his life, there is still humour to be found in this rather deadpan comedy from writer- director Maung Sun.

 

Full review is over at Filmhounds HERE.

Edinburgh International Film Festival - Stop-Zemlia

Sometimes the internet is so saturated that we don’t venture outside of our own bubble. We are given a stereotypical picture of what life is like elsewhere and we don’t try to seek out stories that we can relate to. Stop-Zemlia is a film that feels partly like a documentary and part teen drama that isn’t quite coming of age and isn’t the teen drama you imagine. There are moments of peace and tranquillity followed by reckless behaviour and words of wisdom shared between friends. Its feels like a scene from a film and from your own life.

Full review is over at Filmhounds HERE.