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...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: HEAD SOUTH Goes In Two Directions
In Jonathan Ogilvie's coming-of-age picture Head South we follow a schoolboy in Christchurch, New Zealand, around 1980, who desperately tries to be cool. He fakes selling weed, he fakes playing bass guitar, he's basically fantasising his way into being cool...
Rotterdam 2024 Preview: Recommendations
It's nearing the end of January, and that means the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR for short) is upon us here in the Netherlands, the largest recurring cultural event in this country. Ten days of movie mayhem, much of it...
Crowdfund This: The Dutch Horror Comedy POCONGDORIE
There are many ways to show you're surprised in Dutch, most of which involve yelling blasphemous profanities. As this is frowned upon by the elderly and the devout, we have several better things to shout as well, one of the...
Ard's Dozen Of Musings About 2023
It's been 2024 for a week now so it is time to finish my list of things in 2023 to look back on, just like I did for 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014... Hey, that...
ScreenAnarchy's Top 10 Films of 2023
Hello all of you readers, and the best wishes for 2024 from all of us here at ScreenAnarchy! One of those best wishes is that we hope you will all see many good films. May our enjoyment of cinema be...
Pretty Packaging: Curzon's Massive WIM WENDERS Blu-ray Boxset
An interesting phenomenon for Blu-ray collectors became apparent this year: every few months we got a stellar Blu-ray boxset by British distributor Curzon. They pick a director, get as many films together from that person as they can and go...
THE UFOS OF SOESTERBERG Review: Keeping Things Refreshingly Real
In February 1979, more than a dozen witnesses saw an Unidentified Flying Object in the forests of the middle of the Netherlands. "A bunch of nutters and fantasists", is the first thing most people might think. But this sighting was...
