Tomatometer Percentage: 95% Ana Lily Amirpour's directorial feature debut knocked critics off their feet when it was released back in the middle of the year. A modern vampire tale, shot in monochrome and spoken entirely in Farsi - director Amirpour is Iranian-American - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is a gorgeous, moody, pointed treatise on not only Iran as a country but also zeitgeist-y subject of womens' equality within that society. The colour palette leads to striking similarities between this and Sin City - the town in which we spend our time here is even called Bad City; although its setting remains unclear - it could be a small Californian town, like where it was actually filmed, or it could be Tehran, based on the language and cast. In the end it's intended and sold as an amalgamation of East and West that exists outside of any known spectrum, and it works. Beside some other stylistic flourishes, that's essentially where the similarities end (Sin City couldn't have the monopoly on this colour palette for all time, after all). Sheila Vand plays the main super vampire lady, the titular Girl; a mix of decidedly-Western trainers and a Middle Eastern-flavoured veil that offes a modern reimagining of Dracula's cape. Her lonely existence praying on bullies and children alike - if only to pilfer the latter's skateboard - is interrupted by a burgeoning relationship with local James Dean-a-like Arash (Arash Marandi) and the ensuing cooler-than-cool relationship they share with another. The appeal of the film is perhaps more its style rather than its substance at first glance, but upon further examination we see an intelligent dissection of conflicting cultures, feminist ideology and a much-needed shake-up of a tired creature feature mythos; to simply label it a horror movie is a mistake.
Cinephile since 1993, aged 4, when he saw his very first film in the cinema - Jurassic Park - which is also evidence of damn fine parenting. World champion at Six Degrees of Separation. Lender of DVDs to cheap mates. Connoisseur of Marvel Comics and its Cinematic Universe.
