In mid nineties Paris, something cool was percolating: ‘Garage’, a scene where cool dorks played modern disco and stayed out all night to party. Among the players: ‘Daft Punk’, a DJ duo on their way to global superstardom. And in their shadow: ‘Cheers’, a less talented duo on their way somewhere else. Continue reading Eden (2014)
On a tobacco plantation in rural Italy, a ramshackle community live a timeless existance. Sharecroppers, essentially endentured servants, they are kept under an economic jackboot by the plantation’s cold-blooded owner. When the authorities find out about their illegal treatment, this group of innocents are forced out into the wider world, an environment they are not at all equipped to handle. Continue reading Happy as Lazzaro (2018)
Yoon Do-Joon lives in a small village with his mother. He is a simple soul, easily lead astray, especially by his shrewd, borderline evil friend Jin-Tae. Then Do-Joon is accused of murder; a young girl has been found brutally slain, and he was witnessed during a minor drunken encounter with her the night before. Continue reading Mother (2009)
Cozy lives on the fringes somewhere in Southern Florida. At the start of the film we get her personal history in a series of still image snapshots; indifferent father, average childhood, random memories. Now she is an unhappy single parent, living in a cramped house and and having to hike across a paddock to get to town. Continue reading River of Grass (1994)
Recently divorced Alice frets about her children. They are living with her ex in his remote home town, while she has relocated to Stockholm, and he has cut off her access while custody proceedings unfold. After an alarming late night phone call from her son, she takes rash, drastic action; she abducts both kids and scarpers to Tenerife. Continue reading Charter (2020)
Five strangers are assembled in LA for a diamond robbery. They know each other only by colour code names – Mr White, Mr Blonde, Mr Pink – and otherwise know nothing of each other’s histories. One of them is an undercover cop. When the heist goes violently amiss, the survivors retreat to a suburban warehouse to figure out who double crossed who. Continue reading Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Driving around the outskirts of Tehran in his Range Rover, Mr Badii is looking for help. He asks the everyday people he encounters – a soldier, a student, a security guard – if they will do a job for him. Most assume he means something sexual, or at least nefarious, and decline. But Mr Badii has a different and much more unusual task in mind: he is weighing suicide, and looking for someone to assist him in leaving this world. Continue reading Taste of Cherry (1997)
Andrea Dunbar grew up in the 80’s in ‘The Arbor’, a street in a Bradford housing estate. Or, as one character puts it, ‘the toughest street, in the toughest neighbourhood, in the toughest part of the city.’ Watching a fictionalised recreation of her childhood is like watching ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’; an animalistic fight for survival in a hostile wasteland. Continue reading The Arbor (2010)
On a sun blasted rock in Djibouti, a squad of young Foreign Legionnaires serves their time at a ragged military outpost. Their days are filled with physical training exercises and army drills, with little else to occupy their bodies and minds. Such an empty existence creates a void, that the worst elements of human nature soon rush to fill. Continue reading Beau Travail (1999)
In a Nevada correctional facility, violent offender Roman Coleman sits through his sentence in furious silence; mouth shut, teeth clenched head down. But the prison he is incarcerated in is unusual: attached to it is a horse training facility; Continue reading The Mustang (2019)
