Neuchâtel 2024 Review: MEANWHILE ON EARTH Wanders Through Grief
Fantastic genres like science fiction, fantasy and horror lend themselves for hiding a message in your entertainment. Throw in monsters, aliens or revolting transformations and you can make the most difficult ethical dilemmas palatable for a larger audience. But some...
Neuchâtel 2024 Review: ETERNAL Takes Its Sweet Time Getting... Somewhere
At the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival back in 2021, several films directly tackled the subject of environmental issues (including the International Critics' Jury Winner that year). This year, the selection skewed more towards emotions of grief, loss, failed relationships....
Neuchâtel 2024: All Awards Round-up
Last Saturday saw the closing ceremony of the 23rd edition of the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival, followed by the Swiss première of Longlegs. In the previous eight days, the festival had been a general place of bliss to visit....
Neuchâtel 2024 Review: ENNENNUM Is Science Fiction At Its Finest
On Saturday the 13th of July, the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival had its closing ceremony, complete with the handing out of its awards. As a part of the Critic's Jury this year, we handed our award for best feature...
Neuchâtel 2024 Starts This Week
Tomorrow, the 23rd Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival starts, bringing nine days of horror, fantasy and science fiction films from all over the world to a beautiful Swiss location. This year, the poster and trailer point to a general theme...
ScreenAnarchy's Top 10 Films Of The First Half Of 2024
The last six months of 2024 contain two more days than the first six do (courtesy of February, even in a leap year as this one...), so we could stretch it a day, but now there's no avoiding it any...
Pretty Packaging: The COFFIN JOE Boxset Doesn't Hurt Your Eyes
Distributor Arrow has rightfully created quite a reputation for itself as a producer of exquisite collector's editions, wriggling itself into the small group in which Criterion and Eureka: Masters of Cinema used to be royalty. But as of late, it's...
Pretty Packaging: The French Limited GANDAHAR Release Is Stacked
The French animation director René Laloux only made three feature films in his career, but each of those became a science fiction cult classic. His Fantastic Planet made it into the Criterion collection, and the DVDs Eureka released of the...
Screen Anarchists On DUNE: PART TWO
Back when we created our ScreenAnarchy top-10 list of 2021, I lamented the fact that I didn't rally our troops to make a group review for Denis Villeneuve's Dune. Because even though the film topped the leaderboard that year, opinions...
Rotterdam 2024: What The Audiences Liked Best
Three weeks ago, Rotterdam was about to wrap up its International Film Festival, and a few days after that they published the final results of their audience rating ballots. These, to me, are always at least as interesting as the...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: 13 BOMBS Brings Fire And Noise
The International Film Festival Rotterdam is know for its slant towards new talent, often featuring low-budget arthouse cinema from all over the world. But the festival sometimes also shows the big-budget blockbusters from countries of which the output almost never...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: LA LUNA, Naughty In The Nicest Way
This year, the International Film Festival Rotterdam started with the fairly inoffensive comedy-drama Head South (reviewed here), and it closed with an equally inoffensive film: M. Raihan Halim's Singaporean small-town comedy La Luna. In it, we see the daily life...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: THE LIGHT Points Attention To An Art Scandal
In May 1995, Denmark was celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the end of its occupation by the Nazis during World War 2, and many festivities were planned. As part of these, an art installation called 'Peace Sculpture 1995' was greenlit...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: MILK TEETH, Werewolves Or Weren't Wolves?
The International Film Festival Rotterdam is primarily an arthouse festival, but that doesn't mean there is no genre representation there. Indeed, with some titles you get both flavors. Director Sophia Bösch' Swiss/German film Milk Teeth certainly can be classified as...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: BLUE GIANT Hits All Notes
The Japanese anime director Tachikawa Yuzuru isn't quite a household name yet, despite having directed the stylish Death Parade series and the totally (and tonally) bonkers series Mob Psycho 100. But his film adaptation of Ishizuka Shinichi's famous manga Blue...
Rotterdam 2024 Interview: Per Fly And Mikael Persbrandt Talk About HAMMARSKJÖLD
Danish director Per Fly's new film Hammarskjöld - Fight for Peace is getting rave reviews from around the world. At the International Film Festival Rotterdam it scored a terrific audience rating of 4.6 out of 5, with the biopic landing...
THE TASTE OF THINGS Review: You Will Get Hungry!
In September 2023, The Film By the Sea Festival in Vlissingen focused on French cinema, and on literary book adaptations. With Trần Anh Hùng's The Taste of Things they scored a double-whammy, as it falls in both categories. A loose...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: THE ARCTIC CONVOY Provides Chilling Suspense
The International Film Festival Rotterdam has many international premières for its audiences, one of which was Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken's war drama Konvoi a.k.a. The Arctic Convoy. Solidly researched and excellently executed, Dahlsbakken's film tells a story about the Norwegian ships...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: SLIDE, A Musical Western Satire By Bill Plympton
This year, the International Film Festival Rotterdam had independent animation legend Bill Plympton as a special guest. He was interviewed, performed a masterclass, showing how his style of animation worked, drew sketches for attendants, the lot. A true gentleman. Also,...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: FULL RIVER RED Is A Million Shades Of Grey
Chinese director Zhang Yimou is a superstar and there is no mistaking that when watching his latest film Full River Red. It's an almost impossibly lush film in its production values, with money bleeding off of the screen in every...
