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Trailer Drops For John Langridge's Hit-Man Horror 13 GRAVES

The trailer for Sussex-based Drop Dead Films’ first feature film 13 GRAVES has just been released. Shot entirely on location at Herstmonceux Castle and Branching Out Adventures, Hailsham, 13 GRAVES tells the story of two seasoned contract killers who are marching their latest victim to the ‘mob graveyard’ they have used for several years. When he escapes, leaving them no choice but to hunt him through the surrounding forest, they are soon hopelessly lost. As night falls and the shadows beg...

Review of Denis Delic's Battle of Britain Movie 303 SQUADRON

This film has the honourable intention of telling a glossed over piece of World War II history, the story of the Battle of Britain from the perspective of the Polish pilots and ground crew of 303 Squadron.The film opens promisingly enough, with a view of Spitfires soaring across a summer sky. Has there ever been a better looking aircraft in flight? If ones emotions are not sufficiently stirred by this sight alone, these images are held aloft to the rousing voice of Winston Churchill delivering t...

ANCHOR AND HOPE Film Review & Trailer.

Director: Carlos Marques-Marcet  Genre: Drama, Comedy, Romance ANCHOR AND HOPE is a charming, modern, pre-Brexit rom-com. In years to come, we may marvel at the ease with which people crossed borders on a whim and lived and worked easily in each other's countries.  Eva (Oona Chaplin) and Spanish Kat (Natalia Tena) are a lesbian couple living on a barge moored in the Regent's Canal. Eva is a salsa teacher and Kat is a barge restorer. They're happy, jokey and – despite the fact t...

A LOVE THAT NEVER DIES Film Review

A LOVE THAT NEVER DIES is a documentary about loss. And when I say loss I mean real loss! Not the sort of loss of losing 50 quid, or your football club has been relegated… No this is about the loss of losing a child, brother or sister, suddenly and way before their time. A LOVE THAT NEVER DIES is a beautifully shot documentary made by Jane Harris and Jimmy Edmonds who tragically lost their son Josh in a motorcycle accident whilst he was travelling in South East Asia.  To help deal wi...

A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER Film Review

Director: Jon Sanders  Starring: Anna Mottram, Bob Good, Douglas Finch, Meret Becker, Emma Garden. Jon Sanders, the director of Painted Angels, has collaborated with Anna Mottram and Bob Good before on two previous films, Back to the Garden (2013) and Late September (2012). A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER is the fruit of their latest, longtime collaboration. Evolved through improvisation, the film blurs art and reality in its depiction of a dying marriage.  A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER is set in i...

STILL/BORN Film Review

Canadian horror, thriller STILL/BORN is the tragic tale of Mary (Christine Burke) who gives births to twins, but only one survives - Adam. The joys of being a new parent are subsumed by the understandable trauma and grief. The father, Jack (Jesse Moss) is less emotionally damaged by the experience. He’s a rising star with his employer and having stretched themselves to their financial limits to pay for their home, they need every penny he can earn. Consequently, the pressures of coping with th...

LOWLIFE Film Review

Ryan Prows organ harvest, crime caper deliriously explores a seedy microcosm of Los Angeles. The action orbits around a motel manager, a corrupt Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officer (ICE), an ex-con with a swastika tattoo over his face, a coke fiend and a masked luchador-cum-hitman. It was born out of an anthology of short films Prows and his film buddies were compiling. But like Roger Avery and Quentin Tarantino did with Pulp Fiction before them, they decided to smash the composite parts...

BETTER WATCH OUT Film Review

It wouldn’t be Frightfest without a Christmas-themed horror to befuddle your sense of what day it is over the August Bank Holiday weekend. Better Watch Out is that film this year.  Babysitter Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) is the motherhood and apple pie 17-year old blonde woman twelve year olds’ Luke (Levi Miller) and Garrett (Ed Oxenbould) swoon over. The former has read a blog that tells him fear can get a woman wet and into a man’s arms. His naïve plan is simple. While she babysits him ...

CULT OF CHUCKY Film Review

Andy Barclay will be forever haunted by his childhood experiences at the hands of the infamous 80s ‘Good Guys’ doll Chucky. He’s the foundation on which writer/director Don Mancini has built and sustained a horror franchise. The shotgun blasted head from the end of 2013’s Curse Of Chucky is a trophy in Andy’s safe keeping, but this bodyless, supernatural form of serial killer Charles Lee Ray now taunts our hapless hero by refusing to die. Meanwhile wheelchair bound Nica (Fiona Dourif) ...

DEATH NOTE Film Review

Since he popped his Frightfest cherry with 2011’s Discovery Screen hit ‘A Horrible Way To Die’ the prolific Adam Wingard has fast become a regular fixture here. Death Note is his fourth feature film (his other two are You’re Next, 2013 and The Guest, 2014) to grace the festival. It’s a live adaptation of a Manga comic by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.  Nat Wolff (The Fault In Our Stars, 2014) is Light Turner - a typical outsider, at a typical USA high school, where bullies rule a...

FREEHOLD Film Review

Hussein is a wannabe ruthless, but ultimately naive estate agent. His bachelor flat is a slovenly shrine to his cash rich, time poor lifestyle. His cupboards are bare, and he’s on first name terms with his local pizza delivery service. Problem is his girlfriend, Mel, is moving in and curtailing this young buck's idyllic man cave existence. If only that was his sole concern. There's someone else living in the apartment, but neither Hussein nor Mel invited him to stay. Orlan (Javier Botet,) is a...

KILLING GROUND Film Review

Australian survivalist horror Killing Ground follows a smitten young couple on a camping trip to a remote woodland spot by a river. It’s picture postcard perfect apart from the 4x4, family tent, chairs and long burnt out fire that greets them. But where are the occupants? The answer to that question and the brutality that befell them is given to the audience before our heroes Sam and Ian find out for themselves.  To be frank, the dread Damien Power builds through this non-linear approach ...

ANOTHER MOTHER’S SON Film Review.

Director: Christopher Menaul Genre: Biography, Drama, War ANOTHER MOTHER’S SON is a fascinating film based on an incredible true story. During World War II, Jersey was under Nazi occupation and became a kind of prison island. Amid hardship and privation, some islanders led an unofficial UNDERGROUND resistance. Jenny Seagrove stars as one such ordinary individual – no-nonsense widow Louisa Gould, a village shopkeeper.   On Jersey Russian prisoners of war were used by ...

ANTI MATTER Film Review & Trailer

Director: Keir Burrows Genre: Mystery, Sci-Fi ANTI MATTER is a lean-budgeted thriller which skirts the line of human drama and speculative sci-fi in the tradition of Primer, and Safety Not Guaranteed. The story follows a group of Oxford research students, who build a device and turn it on, without first fully understanding its repercussions. One of the three, Ana, finds herself without memory of the experiment, and begins to question the increasingly shifting motives of her two colleagues. ...

JAWBONE: Britflicks Reviews Boxing Drama Starring Johnny Harris, Ray Winstone, Michael Smiley & Ian McShane

It’s a shame, or rather a travesty, JAWBONE did not receive a wider release in this country. With all the recognisable talent involved in making the film, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, and Paul Weller, you would have hoped this alone would have been enough to secure a nationwide deal. But this is not the only reason why JAWBONE should reach an audience it deserves. The film is powerful. Beautifully shot, brutal and gritty in places and with pitch perfect performances, JAWBONE should be a classic ...

A QUITE PASSION Film Review & Trailer

Director: Terence Davies Starring: Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle, Jodhi May, Catherine Bailey From her quiet but determined rebellion against the imposition of religion at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary that she attended as a girl (Emma Bell) to the drawn-out agonies of her deathbed at the age of 56 (Cynthia Nixon), writer/director Terence Davies’ A QUIET PASSION takes us slowly through the small, significant details of poet Emily Dickinson’s narrowly constrained life, contrasting it...

100 STREETS - Film Review Directed By Jim O'Hanlon

Directed By Jim O'Hanlon  Genre: Drama The film follows the volatile relationship of a glamorous-yet-troubled former rugby player Max (Idris Elba) and his wife, Emily (Gemma Arterton) as they repeatedly clash and reconcile. Elba gives a gritty performance as the long-suffering Max, tormented by the exploits of his self-obsessed on and off wife. Emily’s actions lead to Max’s lust and drug fuelled decline, which culminates in some of the film’s most dramatic moments.  While Ma...

UNDER THE SHADOW Film Review

UNDER THE SHADOW - Film review Directed By Babak Anvari Genre: Horror - Thriller Writer/director Babak Anvari’s first feature, the Farsi-language horror movie UNDER THE SHADOW, has been selected as the UK’s Foreign Language Academy Award entry for 2016. Set in 1988 in a realistically recreated Tehran at the height of the Iran-Iraq war (and shot in Amman, Jordan), it’s easy to see UNDER THE SHADOW as an allegory of the powerful forces that the horrors of war can unleash....

A DOZEN SUMMERS Film Review & Trailer.

Directed By Kenton Hall Genre: Comedy/Drama/Family For an actor to step behind the camera isn’t unusual: in fact, it’s almost becoming de rigeur. But when he’s directing himself, producing, writing and composing the songs, the danger of a whiff of vanity project is all too apparent.  Thankfully, that isn’t the case with Kenton Hall’s A DOZEN SUMMERS, which starts its roll-out around the country today.  If anything, it’s a labour of love. It’s also one that turns the ...

ADULT LIFE SKILLS Film Review & Trailer

Directed By Rachel Tunnard Genre: Comedy Rachel Tunnard’s debut feature ADULT LIFE SKILLS is a quirky, witty and also moving film about grief and identity. Anna (an endearingly off-centre Jodie Whittaker from Broadchurch) has been living absurdly like a teenager in a shed in her mother’s garden since her twin, Billy, died eighteen months ago. She is still stuck in paralyzing grief, missing their close relationship and continuing on her own to make the jokey space-age thumb videos (with ...

A UNITED KINGDOM Film Review

Genre: Biography - Drama - Romance  The European Premiere of A UNITED KINGDOM, director Amma Asante's wonderful, moving evocation of an interracial love story that threatened the British Empire is the first by a black woman director to be the Opening Gala of the BFI London Film Festival. The popularity of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency books and TV series has created a cosy image of Botswana as a prosperous, stable democracy. But Amma Asante’s ironically titled A UNITED KINGDOM, based o...

AND THEN I WAS FRENCH Film Review

Directed By Claire Leona Apps Genre: Thriller AND THEN I WAS FRENCH is the debut feature from Claire Leona Apps, and it’s an ambitious endeavour, but ultimately drifts wayward before it’s shocking – and surprising – ending.  The timid Cara (Joanna Vanderham) lives a mundane life with very little excitement or adventure.  She lives at home with her aunt in the countryside and is friends with a know-it-all friend, Zoe (who has been with her boyfriend a long time). But a...

BritFlicks Reviews Gareth Bryn's Welsh Language Supernatural Thriller, THE PASSING (Yr Ymadawiad).

Gareth Bryn’s debut feature, a mystery/supernatural tension winder, slides onto screens on 8th April, and what a treat it is for any high-brow lover of all things weird. It will also hopefully see another UK director get snapped up into bigger budget film making. Quite right too, for the sheer depth, and yet artiness of this film deserves an Oscar for its director, just for keeping us entertained, if not fascinated for the 97 minutes it runs for. Set in a misty, rainy valley in Wales, one...

ANTHROPOID Film Review & Trailer.

Directed By Sean Ellis Genre:  Biography – History - Thriller ANTHROPOID opens in familiar Second World War film fashion – two undercover Czech freedom fighters, Jan Kubiš (Jamie Dornan, The 9th Life of Louis Drax) and Josef Gabcík (Cillian Murphy, Peaky Blinders), are parachuted by the British into the woods outside Prague in 1942. Risking betrayal and supplied with out-of-date information, they have to make contact with the local resistance, including leader Uncl...

AaaaaaaaH! Film Review & Trailer.

The surreal conceit is cleverly introduced like an Attenborough camera poking through the African jungle without narration. However, in Oram’s film it’s a locked frame staring into a South London patch of woodland as the director and Tom Meetan emerge out of the fauna and flora before resting on a fallen tree stump. It’s difficult to spot the animalistic tendencies at first, but it soon becomes clear that Meetan’s actions are one of deferment to Oram’s alpha male. Next we mov...