Review
Equatorial Guinea0:00/331.1573331× I should probably stop opening these pieces with “Now, I don’t know much about…” because it’s starting to make me sound unusually parochial, but in the case of Equatorial Guinea all I know is that it’s probably on the equator (and that’
Review
Uruguay0:00/234.6453331× We're back on firm ground here: horror. The premise of The Last Matinee is initially extremely simple (locked in a cinema, the patrons watching a horror film are killed one by one) and the film opens with a lovely aerial tracking shot that follows
Review
Vanuatu0:00/171.4986671× I’m trying to watch these films blind. I may have a vague notion of genre, but ideally that’s as much as I’ll know so that my reactions are uncoloured by expectation. For the most part it works, but if I’d known what
Review
Lesotho0:00/187.1146671× You can never underestimate the importance of a title. There are whole teams in Hollywood who work with focus groups just to make sure that the title of the next blockbuster works. Or resonates, as they’re more likely to say. Vibes, probably. They’re titlemaxxing,
Review
Burkina Faso0:00/264.3413331× It became clear quite quickly that much of Africa was going to be an issue for me. I faced three distinct problems: 1. I need a film on disc 2. I need subtitles 3. I am not in Africa Nearly all countries in Africa have
Review
Israel0:00/358.721× I’m far less likely to be critical of a film from a country that’s never made one than I am for one that has an established and experienced film industry. Sick of not seeing themselves represented, for instance, the people of the Marshall Islands
Review
Iraq0:00/179.9466671× I knew a film made in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussain was not going to be fun. I expected that. So when Son of Babylon started off warmly as a quasi-road movie in which a quiet, elderly Kurdish woman (Um-Ibrahim) from
Review
Portugal0:00/269.8881× My tolerance for art house horror is probably different to that of most people. It’s not that I’m a pretentious pseudo-intellectual who relishes obscure cinema (although I freely admit that I probably am), it’s that I like to view films as their
Review
Malta0:00/256.4906671× There are two kinds of boat films. There are the kind in which the ship that people find themselves on is actively trying to kill them (either because there’s a lunatic on board – Dead Calm – or because the vessel itself is the lunatic – Death Ship)
Review
Chad0:00/280.5546671× In case I’ve not already made it clear, I should explain what I’m looking for in a film. I want to be entertained, yes, but I also want to be treated as an intelligent adult: I don’t want to be given easy answers
Review
Algeria0:00/164.0746671× It was always going to happen eventually: I was going to see a film I didn’t like. I’d half-expected it to be the first film I watched (irony is like that) but was surprised by my raunchy thriller from the Democratic Republic of
Review
Afghanistan0:00/192.321× Sometimes, it’s hard to like a film. David Cronenberg’s Crash, for instance, is a masterpiece, but it’s a cold, brutal film. I admire it, but it’s also the very antithesis of “fun”. A film doesn’t need to be fun to be