Film Shapes

This Stalinist 'thriller' sets out its stall early, with a snowy prison yard holding our attention (or not) for a good few minutes. Prisoners are herded in, most very old and on the verge of pegging it. One such geezer is tasked with burning hundreds of letters to Josef himself, pleading with him to hear their case. The old guy saves a letter written in blood and so begins the story. The note is from an ex-academic, party member and proud Bolshevik, asking to see someone from the prosecutors office. Enter Kornev (Alexander Kuznetsov), newly appointed and eager. His meeting with the ancient political prisoner, Stepniak (Alexsandr Filippenko) opens his eyes to the creeping dread of the times. Kornev makes the trek to Moscow to see the Procurator General (Anatoliy Beliy) to make his case against NKVD corruption brough to his attention by Stepniak. It's not an easy mission. The bureaucracy and interminable fucking waiting throughout the first two acts of the film would make Kaf...

The Voice of Hind Rajab is a very confronting film that uses real emergency recordings to tell the story of Hind Rajab, a 6 year old Palestinian girl trapped under siege in northern Gaza in early 2024. Tunisian writer/director Kaouther Ben Hania apparently paused work on another film when she heard the audio of the calls between Hind and the Palestine Red Crescent Society in order to get this film made. And it's a timely reminder of the crimes of this current Israeli government. The film starts in the offices of the Red Crescent, a West Bank based rescue agency, when Omar (Motaz Malhees) gets a call from a man in Germany explaining that his family are stuck in a car that's been attacked. Omar contacts a young woman in the car but is cut off by the sounds of gunfire. When the call is reconnected, it's soon discovered that the only person still alive in the car is a 6 year old girl, Hind. The sole way to save her is to coordinate with the Israeli army, via the Red Cross to a...

I went along to Luna Outdoor last Friday to see a preview of local lad, Zac Hilditch's Albany shot, Tassie set zombie drama, We Bury the Dead . The premise goes that the US government has accidentally detonated an experimental pulse weapon close to the east coast of Tasmania, killing more than 500,000 people. A side note to this disaster is that some of the dead are rebooting. Daisy Ridley plays Ava, an American physical therapist looking for her husband, who was in Tassie on a work retreat. She volunteers to be part of a body retrieval unit but is told she must not leave Hobart. She meets Clay (Brenton Thwaites) and they manage to cadge a motorbike and hit the road south. On the way, among the rebooted, they run into soldier Riley (Mark Coles Smith), who has his own reasons for being out of the capital. In a Q&A after the film with The Curb's Andrew F. Peirce, Hilditch mentioned that the film started out as a pure grief drama, and zombies were added to the script later. Th...

I'm really getting into the 28UoTLCU (28 'Unit of Time' Later Cinematic Universe). This edition is directed by Nia DaCosta, and she picks up the reins from Danny Boyle and slots right into the landscape. The biggest takeaway from The Bone Temple is that Father Figure transference is rife, throughout both of these '28 Years' films, actually. If we choose the obvious link, Spike (Alfie Williams) is passed from parents, Isla (Jodie Comer) and Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) in the first film, onto two polar opposites, Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) and Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell) in this one, and presumably to a certain returnee in the third installment.  But there are also other relationships in the film(s) that explore the nature of dependency, and we have to assume writer Alex Garland, DaCosta, and godfather Boyle, have other, real-world settings in mind, not purely in the zombie genre. This manifests in the rapprochement of Dr. Kelson towards the 'infected', s...

Sirat is the fourth film by writer/director Oliver Laxe and it's a bit of a head scratcher, not just about what's going on, but also why? It stars the excellent Sergi López as Luis, a Spanish dad looking for his daughter in the raves of Morocco. Laxe apparently scoured music festivals and street performers' patches to cast the other characters in the film, and he's unearthed some nuggets here. Steffi (Stefania Gadda), Jade (Jade Oukid) and Tonin (Tonin Janvier) stand out, but all of the non-pros certainly feel like they might attend crusty raves in a desert. In its favour, it certainly drops the shock bombs and some of the scenes are extremely tense (there's a bit of mountain road driving, for example, that tightens the knot). But for the most part, I found it noodly, pretentious and lacking cohesion. There were even a couple of scenes that were cut from the middle, allowed to drift away, and Luis's central motivation just disappears off a Moroccan cliff. The s...

Writer/Director Park Chan-wook likes to experiment with his output. This blackly comic farce follows his previous, Decision to Leave , which, on the face of it, couldn't be more different. But regardless of the content or genre, Park fills his films with his signature cuts, which can be a touch showy but effective nonetheless. No Other Choice is a cautionary tale of modern employment, where everyone is competing with everyone else, executives and company bosses treat their workforce like scum, and people tend to compromise on the basics of society - in the case of our protagonist, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), this means not committing murder.  The film plays out like Kind Hearts and Coronets with a Korean David Brent in the lead. Man-su is a factory foreman at a paper manufacturing company, planning to protest the imminent sacking of some of his underlings, when he realises why his higher-ups have gifted him some expensive eel. It's not a reward, it's compensation for what...

Hamnet sounds like something you might take pig fishing but it's actually a fine new film from Chloé Zhao. It looks at how a seismic event in the life of William Shakespeare and, crucially, his wife Agnes, may have contributed to the creation of one of the Bard's most famous plays. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Maggie O'Farrell, and begins with the introduction of Agnes (A.K.A. Anne) Hathaway, played by Jessie Buckley. She's a strong-willed, earthy falconer and more than a match for besotted Will (Paul Mescal), who spies her returning from the woods one day. Will is employed to tutor Agnes's younger brothers and initially takes her for a servant girl, such is her lack of guile and conceit. They eventually get together and are forced into a shotgun wedding, thanks to the beast with two backs. Agnes is a great support for her husband (who, incidentally, is rarely referred to in the film as Shakespeare) and makes a lot of sacrifices to enable him ...

Hi folks. 2025, eh? Bit of a prick, all things considered, but I reckon it was a pretty good year for films. My list was down from last year, I actually went 6 weeks without seeing a single film! Still time to see some great ones though, and here they are, from 10 down to 1. [Click on the titles for links to full reviews] 10. Hard Truths (2024) Mike Leigh is still punching them out, and this scathing drama reunites him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste (from Secrets and Lies ). She stars as a miserable, lonely wife and mother, constantly verballing those around her. Her sister is the only one who can put up with her. A tough watch but utterly engaging and though-provoking. 9. Of Caravan and the Dogs (2024) This was one of a few gems from the Revelation Film Festival in July. It's a documentary about Vladimir Putin's attacks on press freedom in Russia and how media groups tried to handle the situation. It's depressing but also filled with hope that there are still folks fighting...