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Join myself and Michael Cockerill of the newly launched MindFrame(s) podcast as we create a Holiday Gift Guide for Screen Anarchy. Part 1 looks at home entertainment gifts from boutique labels. Scream Factory offers up an outstanding Candyman special edition, Blue Underground has released a fantastic 4K upgrade of Zombie and Arrow Video gives us an awesome edition of John Landis' little-seen first pic Schlock. Severin pulls Horror of Party Beach, an equally obscure title, into beautifully restored shape, and Cinelicious Pics sent their entire catalog! Belladonna of Sadness, The Last Movie, Private Property, Gangs of Wasseypur, Funeral Parade of Roses, and two from Agnes Varda starring Jane Birkin. All come highly recommended depending on the taste of the cinephile you are buying them for....

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You’ve done every film related job from producer and actor to cinematographer and editor. Was directing always the goal?

Poverty dictates…I would just take any position I could and figure it out from there, especially when I made The Queen Of Hollywood Blvd. where I just didn’t have the budget and had to take on as many positions as I could. Directing was always the ultimate goal though. Funny enough, the genesis of Hell came from a job I had done years before when I was camera operating on a feature film The Ganzfeld Experiment. It was a crazy production, and my dad was the director. The line producer of Ganzfeld was Julio Hallivis. We became friends and stayed in touch. Cut to five years later, I show Julio my first film The Queen of Hollywood Blvd. and he says “Hey man, I got a script I think you will dig.

Some movies you don't exit, you escape. You crawl out from underneath them, they're so heavy and oppressive and immovably huge. "Our Children" is one such weighty mass. But instead of being a transformative, ultimately life-affirming experience, the way similarly bleak "Amour" and "Rust & Bone" are, "Our Children" is full of one-note grimness. Directed by Belgian film director Joachim Lafosse ("Nue Propriété," "Élève libre") there's nothing to be gained from the experience, and it is a grim drag in both content and form. By the time it reaches its semi-shocking conclusion, groans erupted from our audience and the squeaking of hastily exited chairs could be heard. The opening frames of "Our Children" reveal four tiny coffins being loaded into an airplane. They're followed by a shot of Murielle (Emilie Dequenne), who looks all beat up and tells the unseen person at her bedside that she wants the kids to be buried in Morocco.

Some movies you don't exit, you escape. You crawl out from underneath them, they're so heavy and oppressive and immovably huge. "Our Children" is one such weighty mass. But instead of being a transformative, ultimately life-affirming experience, the way similarly bleak "Amour" and "Rust & Bone" are, "Our Children" is full of one-note grimness. Directed by Belgian film director Joachim Lafosse ("Nue Propriété," "Élève libre") there's nothing to be gained from the experience, and is a grim drag in both content and form. By the time it reaches its semi-shocking conclusion, groans erupted from our audience and the squeaking of hastily exited chairs could be heard. The opening frames of "Our Children" reveal four tiny coffins being loaded into an airplane. They're followed by a shot of Murielle (Emilie Dequenne), who looks all beat up and who tells the unseen...

Buzz: It what looks to be especially strong dramatic fare, Nue propriété (2006) and Élève libre (2008) helmer Joachim Lafosse stamped this picture with Cannes laurels: the mix includes fellow Belge Emilie Dequenne (Dardenne bros’ Rosetta) and reunites A Prophet’s Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup as well. Lafosse likes to provoke his texts with bent out of shape characters – they lack a certain lack of transparency and the family dynamic, a focal point in his last three, never turn out to be quite the white picket fence and 2.5 kids sort. French-speaking auds will definitely consider this Un Certain Regard selected film as a must item, but international auds might overlook the grim number.

Gist: Murielle (Émilie Dequenne) and Mounir (Tahar Rahim) love each other passionately. Ever since he was a boy, the young man has been living with Doctor Pinget (Niels Arestrup) who provides him with a comfortable life. When Mounir...

Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with another Take Three. Today: Jérémie Renier

Take One: Private Property/Nue propriété (2006)

Joachim Lafosse’s beautifully-crafted French family drama Private Property, starred arthouse doyenne Isabelle Huppert alongside Renier and his brother Yannick (also an actor). They're just about getting on in a country house that non-identical twins Thierry (Jérémie) and François (Yannick) don’t want to sell, but Mater Dearest does; the live-away father/ex-husband backs the twins – and it’s his house. The drama is all about the to and fro of this looming possibility, the elephant smack bang in the front room and pregnant with the biggest pause imaginable. Lafosse curiously shapes his narrative with inharmonious tension between the three: it’s sometimes sexual, sometimes queasily thick, and most times unavoidable. Freud would’ve loved a visit with this Gallic clan.

Renier plays the pivotal character; an invisible finger seems to...