southern
Zac Hestand explores how Dee Rees’ Mudbound excels as a contemporary successor to the classic work of William Faulkner.
The feminist undertones, stunning performances,cinematography and costuming more than make up for The Beguiled’s shallow story line.
Though with a fine, understated performance by Marilyn Manson, Let Me Make You a Martyr is too unrelentingly dark and dull to recommend.
Dig Two Graves is a visually stunning low budget Gothic thriller, which is effectively surreal and compelling.
Between three men and a coterie of animals, Uncertain tells a richly rewarding story around the primal themes of death, birth and rebirth.
The title of horror anthology Southbound implies a deep sojourn into racist, redneck Americana, locked and loaded under a blood red, lone star. This is a Democrat’s version of hell, ruled by Donald Trump’s tentacles and all of his Republican demons, suckered into building a never ending wall between America and the rest of the world. Southbound suggests a one-way ticket to Hades, but its various characters are still on their terrifying journeys, clutching desperately to their ever diminishing morality.
Class consciousnes and its oft-contingent condemnation of wealth was a theme at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival that one would be hard-pressed to overlook. The most obvious reason for this is the fact that Ken Loach’s poignant portrait of one man’s struggle to navigate Britain’s welfare system, I, Daniel Blake, took home the Palme d’Or. But this topic was also prominent in part because films about wealth, or lack thereof, pervaded the entire festival, spanning its various sections.
“A Cajun devil hunter goes to the crossroads and meets the devil’s attorney”. The compelling summary of Chasseur had me hooked before I even started watching, let alone the mesmerising central performance from the film’s writer and director, Christopher Soren Kelly. An unconventional structure, perhaps, but a successful one.
“These men who bust their asses work like dogs. And I believe in them, but every day they hurt. They get old, they peel back…
