Little Monsters is a great advert for teacher excellence, if not much of a recruiting tool – as multi-talented kindergarten teacher Miss Caroline has to save her class of small charges as they face down an attempted zombie apocalypse. I say attempted; it does feel a little half-hearted, as the world’s slowest undead hordes stagger round… Little Monsters (London Film Festival 2019) Read More
Two For Joy 4 stars
For the widowed Aisha (Samantha Morton) grief itself has become the driving force, rather than the reaction; with her family caught in an enervating circle of misery where the sheer exhaustion of getting through the day prevents them from escaping. It needs a huge catalyst to kick them off the repetitive cycle onto a different… Two For Joy Read More
Hereditary 4 stars
A creaky floorboard and a clicking tongue. Two sounds you don’t want to hear when you’re alone in the house and the only tongue clicker you know of is your dead sister. “I never wanted to be your mother” Annie says to her teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff), “it wasn’t my fault and I tried… Hereditary Read More
Shoplifters 4.5 stars
According to Osamu shoplifting is morally acceptable as “whatever’s in a store doesn’t belong to anyone yet”. Though it turns out that this family takes the “not belonging to anyone” reasoning into other areas too – decisions which actually seem in some ways less morally dubious, when they find themselves taking home a little girl… Shoplifters Read More
Big Bad Fox And Other Tales 3.5 stars
From accidental abandonment in a butcher’s van to being packaged up in a polystyrene-filled box, the adorable baby Pauline, star of the first film in this trilogy of tales, is never less than happy. Being a child of the 1970s I did question the necessity for the BBFC warning “some dangerous behaviours” at the start… Big Bad Fox And Other Tales Read More
Secret Of Marrowbone 3 stars
“He’ll never leave us. Not even dead” cries Jane (Mia Goth), about their evil father, a vicious brute who will try to kill anyone, even his children. Their terror is palpable, which makes one wonder why their mother took them to the one place he’d look for them outside of England – her childhood home,… Secret Of Marrowbone Read More