celluloid consommé

  For Hammer Horror’s 9th new film upon returning to the world (in somewhat of a re-re-re-awakening thanks to new CEO John Gore), they take on a classic story they’ve done before in true Hammer fashion. Joe Stephenson takes on an adaptation of  The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde , with Eddie Izzard taking up the titular role in  Doctor Jekyll . It becomes clear very early on that  Jekyll  is entirely a vessel for Izzard. The intended dramatics and attempted scares don’t come to the peaks the film clearly wants to reach, no matter how overzealous Blair Mowat’s score is. Opposite Dr. Nina Jekyll for the duration is Rob (Scott Chambers), a recently released ex-con and recovering addict hired on as an assistant to Jekyll as her health wanes. Press enter or click to view image in full size A recent retiree from the field of medicine and pharmaceuticals, Jekyll struggles with her own physical & mental health. While Rob hardly seems right for the job he ...

  If you were living in a world where people out of almost nowhere start to mutate into animals, could you accept the ramifications for human rights it presents? Thomas Cailley’s  The Animal Kingdom  asks exactly this, in a framework that adopts a set of genre tropes to ease his argument along despite it coming across as somewhat jagged. The film follows father and son François and Émile (Romain Duris and Paul Kircher, respectively) as they come to different terms with their mother and wife Lana (Florence Deretz) undergoing a transformation and beginning to lose her speech and higher functions. Émile begins an estrangement from her in a desperate attempt to disassociate from her, as her declining condition is all he sees. But his father maintains the love he has for Lana and the rift that exists between father and son challenges their intimate relationship made more intense with the exclusion of a present mother. Press enter or click to view image in full size Romain Duri...

  Bertrand Mandico is quickly establishing himself as one of the goopiest, goriest, and horniest French fringe genre filmmakers of the moment, and his newest film  She Is Conann  strays not from that path. In a sprightly retelling of the Robert E. Howard  Conan  stories, an old woman (Françoise Brion) awakes in a medical facility and is escorted through the afterlife by Rainer (Elina Löwensohn), a hellhound shutterbug donning a diamond-monogrammed leather jacket. He leads the unknown woman to a throne of dizzying heights where a woman identical to her sits and begins to tell her the life story of herself, of Conann the Barbarian (Claire Duburcq, Christa Théret, Sandra Parfait, Agata Buzek, Nathalie Richard, & Françoise Brion). Through the lens of Bertrand Mandico’s clear love for the works of ’80s Italian horror and sexploitation of the ’70s, there couldn’t be a more perfect way to navigate the gruesome nature of Conann’s visceral fictional life. Conann chro...