Director: Kitty Green Stars: Julia Garner, Matthew Macfayden, Makenzie Leigh Part of my lockdown pattern so far has involved rewatching AMC's prestige TV show Mad Men. Set in the '60s, the series revels in the regressive attitudes to women prevalent at the time in Manhattan office spaces, asking us to be shocked at the behaviour … Continue reading Review: The Assistant
Director: Greg Barker Stars: Ana de Armas, Wagner Moura, Garret Dillahunt Another week in lockdown, another Netflix Original. Credit to the global streaming giant; for the moment they're still able to dutifully trickle out content for the bored and terrifyied masses. Among this week's new crumbs for the pecking at is Greg Barker's political biopic … Continue reading Review: Sergio (2020)
Director: Nora Fingscheidt Stars: Helena Zengel, Albrecht Schuch, Gabriela Maria Schmeide With her ubiquitous bright pink puffer jacket, nine-year-old tearaway Benni (Helena Zengel) certainly stands out from whatever landscape she happens to be terrorising. Thanks to some extreme behavioural disorders, she lives a chaotic existence of constantly shifting parameters. Her mother, Bianca (Lisa Hagmeister), seems … Continue reading Review: System Crasher
Year: 1962 Director: Michelangelo Antonioni Stars: Monica Vitti, Alain Delon, Francisco Rabal At the time of writing the UK is in lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We can leave the house to work (if we're essential workers), to buy groceries or visit pharmacies, or to take a daily regiment of exercise. Go for a … Continue reading Why I Love… #113: L’Eclisse
It was doomed, in a way. Having weathered the Grand Guignol misfire of 1997's Alien Resurrection, and ran the gauntlet of the insipid (non-canon) Alien vs Predator movies of the mid-2000s, xenomorph fans needed something to believe in. Word that the Godfather of Alien himself - Ridley Scott - was returning to the series set … Continue reading What About… Prometheus
Horror cinema's least forgiving subgenre is the found footage movie. Shoestring budgets that often produce huge returns on minimal investments, though the products themselves are often far from satisfying. Often employing non-actors or unknowns in order to sell their fragile realities, a rookie performance can shatter the whole illusion. These flicks live or die on … Continue reading Stay-At-Home Film Festival: Found Footage
Year: 1992 Director: Bernard Rose Stars: Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Kasi Lemmons Growing up as a sheltered white kid on the Southern coast of England in the early '90s, there was a wealth of then-recent horror to sate my appetite for excitement. The '80s had been a boom-time for the genre as video exploded with … Continue reading Why I Love… #112: Candyman
Director: Eliza Hittman Stars: Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Théodore Pellerin Eliza Hittman's second feature Beach Rats was one of my favourite films of the last decade, though I never wrote about it here on The Lost Highway Hotel. Nevertheless, her sympathetic focus on American youth and her keen observational eye meant that whatever came next would … Continue reading Review: Never Rarely Sometimes Always
