New Trailer For Mamoru Hosoda's BELLE
Eleven years ago, Japanese writer-director Mamoru Hosoda made what is in my opinion one of the best films of this century, animated or other: Summer Wars. In it, he showed, with flair, a fairly prophetic tale of the impact widespread...
Review: RIDERS OF JUSTICE, Mads Mikkelsen Leads the Charge
Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Andrea Heick Gadeberg star in an action-comedy/drama from director Anders Thomas Jensen.
Imagine 2021 Review: ABSOLUTE DENIAL Casts Doubts
Last month's Imagine Film Festival Amsterdam was an on-line only event unfortunately, but that didn't stop the festival from scoring a true world première, and one with an animated film, no less. That film is Ryan Braund's feature debut Absolute...
Imagine 2021 Winners Awarded!
Of the film festivals in the Netherlands, there are four which I will regularly attend. Rotterdam has the International Film Festival, which is by far the largest. Camera Japan and BUTFF Breda are wonderful small fests, each with its own...
Rotterdam 2021 Review: MANDIBLES Is Dumb Fun With A Big Fly
Writer-director Quentin Dupieux cannot be charged with choosing middle-of-the-road subjects for his films. Ever since he made a serial killer thriller about a living car tire with homicidal psychic powers (Rubber, for those interested...), there has been no predicting what...
Now Streaming: AUDIO GUIDE, Free To Watch Until March 10th
Australian director Chris Elena's short Audio Guide may only be 14 minutes long, but rest assured it will stick with you for a lot longer than that. Its premise, as with many good things, is a simple one: a young...
Slamdance 2021 Trailer: CODE NAME: NAGASAKI
With a slew of fantastic short films, Norwegian writer-director Fredrik Hana has established his reputation as a filmmaker with a sharp eye for hauntingly beautiful visuals, anchored by dark, gripping narratives. Now he's back with his first feature-length documentary, Code...
Rotterdam 2021 Review: DEAD & BEAUTIFUL, Poor Little Rich Vampires
Dutch director David Verbeek is no stranger to the International Film Festival Rotterdam: his newest film Dead & Beautiful is his seventh feature to play there. For quite some years we've been hearing bits and pieces about "this vampire film"...
Rotterdam 2021 Review: THE CEMIL SHOW
People going mad. It's a good topic to cover as drama, and in film history we can see plenty of great examples of such stories, from Polanski's Repulsion to Todd Phillips' recent Joker. This year, the International Film Festival Rotterdam...
Rotterdam 2021 Review: RIDERS OF JUSTICE Provides All Sorts Of Therapy
Today saw the beginning of the 50th International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the title which started it a few hours ago was Riders of Justice, the new film by regular fest-guest Anders Thomas Jensen, starring Mads Mikkelsen. Out of necessity,...
Rotterdam 2021 Trailer: THE CEMIL SHOW
Next week sees the start of the 50th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and a big party that should have been... if it weren't for the Covid-19 pandemic. As the single largest cultural event in the Netherlands, often...
Ard's Dozen Of Musings About 2020
Last year I started my overview of 2019 with lamenting about how few films I had seen, as I noticed a steady downward trend. But in 2020? I caught up. Months of lock-downs for my whole family left us with...
ScreenAnarchy Top Films of 2020
One of the great advantages of ScreenAnarchy's global writing staff is that our individual end-of-year lists always have a least a few titles that the rest of us have not only not seen, but likely haven't heard of. And I'm...
A Stupendous Trailer Arrives For EVANGELION 3.0 + 1.0: THRICE UPON A TIME!
It's been a long wait for the fourth film in Anno Hideaki's Evangelion reboot series. The previous film, Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo, premiered in 2012. Production problems, a Shin Godzilla film and a pandemic all caused delays upon...
Review: THE MORTUARY COLLECTION, Horror Stories, More Than Morality Fables
Clancy Brown, Caitlin Custer and Christine Kilmer star in director Ryan Spindell's horror anthology film, now streaming on Shudder.
Imagine 2020 Review: SLEEPLESS BEAUTY Keeps You Awake
Lo and behold: despite the limitations brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Amsterdam-based Imagine Film Festival managed to get itself two theatrical world premieres for its 2020 edition. One of them was Peet Gelderblom's poetic collage film When Forever...
Now Streaming: CASTLE IN THE SKY, Where Dreams Come True
Miyazaki Hayao directs a terrific animated adventure, now streaming on HBO Max.
BUT Film Festival 2020: Join The European Underground Panel Discussion!
Pandemic or no pandemic, the Dutch genre film festivals are managing, albeit with some obvious changes. The Breda-based B-Film, Underground & Trash Film Festival, BUTFF for short, was expected to be celebrating its 15th iteration this year in a grand...
Imagine 2020 Review: WHEN FOREVER DIES
(Is it a drama? Is it a documentary? Is it a history lesson? It's...) When the current pandemic started showing its teeth in the Netherlands in March, it meant the end of the 2020 edition of the Imagine Film Festival...
Remembering A Genius: Kon Satoshi, Who Left Us Ten Years Ago.
You know about those historical moments, of which you can remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when the news broke? Ten years ago, I was called out of bed in the morning by an anime-loving friend...
