Anton Bitel Festivals

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Anton Bitel Festivals |Anton Bitel |Rachel Pronger |Leigh Singer

Reviewed from the 2025 Glasgow Film FestivalA middle-aged woman, visibly upset, gets into her car at night, turns on some classical music, drives into secluded woodland, and grabs a shovel to dig a grave. The opening sequence of Jed Hart’s Restless in fact comes near the film’s chronological end, announcing to viewers from the outset that what might otherwise seem a British kitchen-sink drama is headed somewhere darkly different.

Aug 20, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Anton Bitel Festivals |Anton Bitel |Matthew Thrift |Josh Slater-Williams

For the first time, FrightFest is opening and closing with films by female directors. And there’s plenty in between to disrupt the boys’ club of horror too. 20 August 2024The elegiac neo-noir A Desert begins as a portrait of Alex (Kai Lennox) trying to lose himself in the desert as he retreads his own receding career as analogue photographer.

Mar 6, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Anton Bitel Festivals |Anton Bitel |Steph Green |Kim Newman

Viggo Mortensen serves as writer, director and star in a Civil War era western exploring the personal battles of a Nevada couple. 6 March 2024Reviewed from the 2024 Glasgow Film Festival Time plays tricks in writer/director Viggo Mortensen’s mid-19th century oater The Dead Don’t Hurt.

Jan 25, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Anton Bitel Festivals |Anton Bitel |Sophia Satchell-Baeza |Kelli Weston

Alicia Silverstone and Nick Frost star in a pratfall-filled satire about a feckless family man that’s less deconstructed than it is chauvinistic. 25 January 2024 Reviewed from the 2024 Sundance Film FestivalBernie Christian (Nick Frost) feels emasculated by his more capable, sex-averse lawyer wife Eva (Alicia Silverstone) who acts as the breadwinner for the family while he is left at home to look after teen children Sarah (Gaite Jansen) and Adam (Walt Klink).

Oct 16, 2023 | bfi.org.uk | Anton Bitel Festivals |Anton Bitel |Adam Nayman |Stephanie Bunbury

Starve Acre opens with a quote – an obscure four-line folk poem about a demonic figure named Jack and a dandelion, which will cast a shadow over what follows. This citation might be a way of establishing from the outset the literary origins of the film, adapted by writer/director Daniel Kokotajlo (Apostasy, 2017) from Andrew Michael Hurley’s 2019 novel of the same name.