RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY **** UK 2023 Dir: Sebastiano Pupino. 13 mins The centuries-old nursery rhyme of the title gains a more disturbing meaning in Italian filmmaker Pupino’s slick, unnerving short – one of an eclectic series of films he has made since 2009’s REFRAIN. It’s written by Thalia Kent-Egan and showcases an impressive central performance by Lisbon-born actor Carolina Lopes. We first see her apparently in the throes of grief while getting her first tattoo, following the death of her grandfather. Pupino strikes a note of unease from the get-go: a persistently flickering light in the oddly disquieting studio…
Author: Steven West
HERD ** USA 2023 Dir: Steven Pierce. 97 mins Jamie (Ellen Adair) and Alex (Mitzi Akaha) decide a canoeing break in the Missouri countryside will help their marital woes: Jamie lets out her pent-up frustrations about the job she hates, the city life she resents and her dislike of having kids. Alex spills her guilt (there’s a lost-baby tragedy haunting the backstory) and frustration at Jamie’s tendency to shut out her emotions. As the camping trip exposes their individual flaws and bugbears, a boating accident forces them to take refuge in a town struggling to contain a zombie virus. Though,…
ENTER THE CLONES OF BRUCE **** USA 2023 Dir: David Gregory. 100 mins United with experienced collaborators like cameraman Jim Kunz and editor Douglas Buck, Severin’s David Gregory has delivered a funny, insightful feature-length retrospective on the jaw-dropping Brucesploitation cycle that swiftly unleashed itself on the world in the wake of Bruce Lee’s untimely death. It opens with a whistlestop tour of the real Bruce’s short but remarkable life and career: actor David Chiang and expert Mike Leeder are among the talking heads reflecting on the Run Run Shaw factory and Lee’s international fame, with the kind of anecdotes that…
ORPHAN: FIRST KILL **** USA / Canada 2022 Dir: William Brent Bell. 102 mins Here’s a belated prequel to what seemed a memorably twisted one-off that surprises by not going the lazy route. Director William Brent Bell (of THE BOY films and WER) and screenwriter David Coggeshall, realising they can’t outdo the bravura second half twist of ORPHAN, find a different, satisfying way of subverting our expectations of what initially appears to be a join-the-dots cash-in. And, the biggest asset of both films, now-twentysomething star Isabelle Fuhrman, authentically inhabits (with the help of some cinematic trickery) the (even younger) body…
ORPHAN **** USA 2009 Dir: Jaume Collet-Serra. 123 mins Isabelle Fuhrman is terrific as Esther, one of cinema’s memorable Bad Seeds: a nine year old, Russian-born girl who charms Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard at CCH Pounder’s orphanage as they grieve the recent death of what would have been their third child. This intelligent, well-spoken orphan has her demons, however: bullied by bitchy classmates for her “Little Bo Peep” everyday clothes, she threatens or harms anyone threatening her new life. Sarsgaard is blinded by her charm while his wife slips into paranoia overdrive, determined to figure out her dark secrets.…