Category: REVIEWS

After an author named David plots the seemingly accidental murder of his wife, her body is never recovered, and he’s convinced that she’s still alive. Meanwhile, as David translates the final novel by a writer who also died mysteriously, he finds himself attracted to the man’s sultry widow. Fact or fiction, life or death… in this tale, nothing is certain.

Who doesn’t love a good old fashioned mystery? There is just something so incredibly fun about getting to experience a story that is constantly making you guess scene after scene. It gets you to use your brain a lot and essentially put it in full-use.

Over the course of the years, we have been blessed with a ton of great mystery movies such as last year’s Rian Johnson-directed Knives Out. But, sadly, Daniel Alfredson’s Intrigo: Death of an Author is no Knives Out. It not only fails at being a good mystery-thriller, but it just fails at being a good movie in general.

One of the biggest reasons as to why the movie is as boring and tiresome as it is, is due to its bizarre editing styles and its extremely sloppy storytelling. I get it. This is a mystery movie, and so we should all come to expect there to be some sort of a rug being pulled from beneath us, but the way Intrigo does it is not only unrewarding and frustrating, but these revelations that come to light just don’t make any sense.

The way the movie jumps from puzzle piece to puzzle piece is going to make you scratch your head in all the wrong ways. Gratefully though, along the way we do get treated to some remarkably good performances, namely Ben Kingsley as Henderson. He is quite raw and intimidating in the role and sells every single scene that he was in.

On top of that, he was probably the character that got the most amount of development along the way. Don’t get me wrong, Tuva Novotny and Michael Byrne are also quite exceptional here. It’s just that their characters don’t get as much to do as Kingsley does. They feel somewhat like side characters, unfortunately.

All in all, this is a disappointingly bland movie that doesn’t have a lot to say. It has some nice camera work from director of photography Pawel Edelman, the performances across the board are quite good, but besides that, it has nothing exciting to offer. Simply put, there is nothing worse than a thriller with no thrills. That’s exactly what Death of an Author is.

Intrigo: Death of an Author tells its story in a frustratingly complex and unrewarding manner even if its performances and cinematography are exceptional.

Bt Robert Cordaro.

We all have those friends who can never seem to put their glory days as a young athlete behind them. Decades after their career has been over they’ll jump at any chance to talk about their struggles, triumphs, victory and defeats. Infinite Football directed by Corneliu Proumboiu is kind of like that. But with a twist. 

In a desolate and seemingly abandoned park, the opening scene shows the film’s subject, Laurentiu Ginghina recalling his last game as a football player when a devastating injury left him with a broken tibia and derailed his future plans of going to university to study forestry.

A year later, an additional leg injury in a factory further sidetracked him. Now middle aged and working as a paper pushing bureaucrat, Laurentiu has some ideas on how to change the game that left him with nothing more than a lifetime of disappointments. And he wants to share them. 

Occasionally getting sidetracked with tales of the many detours his life has taken since that fateful day on the field, Larentiu explains in great detail adjustments he thinks would make the game safer and perhaps prevent injuries like the one he had sustained.

No right angles on the field, separating teams into sub-teams, restricting player and ball movement are just a few of what he has in mind. And whether he is talking about his life’s many failures and frustrations or completely upending the tradition of a game that has been played for over 150 years, his nonchalant storytelling style seems to depict at man at peace with where he is in life. His obsession with the incident that left him hobbled as a teenager and set the course of his life in a completely new direction says different. 

Told plainly and as straightforward as possible, his meandering monologues on irrigation systems in the Sierra Nevada or orange farms in Florida are chapters but not the whole story. The whole story is about a man so obsessed with a single life event, he will spend his life hatching ways it could have been avoided.

At times both sad and darkly comic, Infinite Football is an interesting, albeit simply told, account of the changes you’d make if you could go back and make them. 

Cuisinière (Jeanne Werner) has a new job working in the kitchen of a high-end restaurant. She’s obviously worked hard to get where she is, but she’s still incredibly nervous, even more so when the head chef (Malika Kathir) makes her presence known.

The head chef wants everybody to know that she demands the best and complete perfection. However, after an accident, Cuisinière starts to wonder whether she has what it takes. As the pressure builds up and things get out of her control, Cuisinière’s job and indeed her entire career may be in the balance.

CRU (raw in French) is a short film written and directed by David Oesch that shows the intense, up close and highly pressurized environment of working in a kitchen. Using a handheld camera that moves around rapidly, following Cuisinière as she moves about the kitchen, Oesch’s camera is always with her and the audience may feel the pressure she is under as she tries her best to do things right.

The accident may leave some audience members feeling a little squeamish, especially when the repercussions are shown when it briefly moves into the restaurant itself.

However, this may be the point that Oesch wants to make. The slightly dark humour and result of Cuisinière’s hard work may be difficult to stomach, but what CRU is saying that hard work and perseverance are all well and good, but for true success you may need to put in your chunk of flesh.

Kathir is fantastic as the stern and domineering chef, slowly walking around the room and smoking a cigarette all adding to her persona. The audience may even start to feel just as terrified as Cuisinière. Despite Kathir’s short stature, she still manages to keep an air of authority and Oesch’s direction makes sure that she never comes across as comedic. Werner is similarly well cast, her wide-eyed expressions of terror as she darts around the kitchen are surely something many people can identify with.

Either in their own workplace or at the hands of Gordon Ramsey on reality TV, so they easily connect with her. It’s up to the audience to decide on whether all Cuisinière’s hard work, determination and ambition is worth it in the end.

Keith (Alex Carter) and Gareth (David Schaal) are enthusiastic historical re-enactment players who dress up as Roundheads during their spare time and participate in presumably historically accurate battles against the Cavaliers. Alice (Cariad Lloyd) is new to the hobby, but is willing to learn and picks up on the activities quite quickly, much to the delight of Keith.

So, in the middle of the English countryside they meet to help Alice to get into the swing of things and hope that they don’t have to contend with any rascally Cavaliers.

Roundheads and Cavaliers is a short British comedy film written by Kevin Mears and directed by Chloe Thomas. In the same vein as British sitcom Detectorists, Roundheads and Cavaliers takes a look at the more unusual hobbies of the British public and uses it to create characters and set up situations whilst all in the wrap of something quintessentially British, cuddly and very funny. In a very short space of time Roundheads and Cavaliers introduces the audience to its main cast of characters, the relationships between them all and immediately tells the audience the kind of people that they are.

Showing this trio in a warm and friendly light, Roundheads and Cavaliers doesn’t ever condescend the main characters for the hobby that they love in the way that other comedies might do.

Instead, Roundheads and Cavaliers shows a snippet of what could be a full-blown sitcom with enough potential to expand on the characters and expand on the supposed rivalry with the only Cavalier, Adrian (Perry Fitpatrick) who is perhaps roleplaying a bit too hard.

There are plenty of moments in its short run that will make the audience smile and even laugh out loud at the things that the characters pick up on that the audience may not have thought about. Roundheads and Cavaliers may give the audience that warm, fuzzy feeling that they need at the end of a long week as they can relax and unwind.

Watching Alice, Gareth and Keith bravely and accurately re-enacting the battles of a time in British history that are not often covered is certainly unique. Especially in comedy.

Sasha Joseph Neulinger and his sister were the victims of sexual abuse when they were children. They knew their attackers, they were close family members and through Neulinger’s documentary, Rewind, Neulinger goes back into his past to talk about the worst time in his and his family’s life. In fact, Neulinger’s story may be one that many families have experienced before and for many other families it’s their worst nightmare.

Rewind uses interviews with Neulinger’s family members, the psychiatrist that helped him and his sister and even talks to law enforcement to get the full, rounded, raw and honest picture of what happened during his childhood. However, Neulinger’s father, Henry is also a filmmaker and spent many years filming the family in good times and bad.

Rewind uses that footage that Henry took and distributes it throughout the documentary to not only add some colour to the story, but to show the faces of those abusers that hid in plain sight and also shows the effects that it had on the director’s own behaviour. Neulinger’s documentary goes deeper than any other about child abuse could ever imagine, and it’s thanks to his bravery, honesty and his inherited skill as a filmmaker.

Rewind has the rare opportunity to tell a real and unflinching story of abuse and it’s through Neulinger’s ability to tell a story that it thankfully stays so grounded, able to show its audience and not just tell.

The image of child abuse and those abusers leaves a lot to the imagination for those fortunate enough not to have experienced it themselves, but Rewind’s gives the audience a much more detailed depiction of child abuse, the abusers and how abuse can be bred, nurtured and ultimately hidden.

Thankfully, Neulinger hasn’t let the experiences of his early childhood define him and with the help and support of his family and compassionate professionals, he has learned to move on, helping others so that his experiences are not so common.

Rewind is not only a heart-breaking story of abuse and the imbalance of justice, but it shows that there is still life, hope and a future even for those who have been so deeply hurt.