Note: film club blog posts are both reviews and accounts of zoom watches, so are extremely spoilery. Don’t read if you’re a fan of chin-scratching ambiguity, that’s what I’m saying. Disaster films take our favourite movie metaphors and make them real, and that’s taken to its glorious (if deadly) extreme in The Wave, where a… The film club watches Norway’s The Wave, but is it yay or no way? Read More
Director-producer Rita Osei on her journey to bring Bliss! to the big screen
“A boy at the end of the Seville screening came up and said ‘I want to be a dad now. A real dad’.” Rita Osei is the director-producer of Bliss!, set in North East England and Norway. Bliss! follows Tasha, a 16 year old girl with a seemingly indifferent mother and a violent stepdad, who… Director-producer Rita Osei on her journey to bring Bliss! to the big screen Read More
Bliss! 4 stars
Bliss! is an assured and well-judged feature debut from director Rita Osei – an uplifting family film but an unsentimental one, and a movie that young girls can call their own. Searching Norway for a blond man nicknamed The Viking was never going to be easy. But it shows how deep teenage Tash’s need for… Bliss! Read More
The King’s Choice 4 stars
The actual German invasion is swift, though not entirely unexpected. A battleship sails into the Straits of Norway, the home forces attack, and a huge ship burns orange against an inky blue night sky. It’s an impressive initial volley, and also a heartbreaking last stand, as more German warships follow it into Norwegian waters. A… The King’s Choice Read More
Dead Snow 4 stars
“If you have your intestines in your hands, what do you do then?” and this sadly un-rhetorical question, posed by a Menacing Local to the kids-in-the-isolated-cabin, haunted me until about two-thirds of the way through Norwegian Nazi zombie mash up Dead Snow when it was overtaken by this thought: “if you are hanging off a cliff holding onto a Nazi zombie’s… Dead Snow Read More