Arrow’s release of Sleep / Schlaf, the debut feature of German director Michael Venus, on Blu-ray is not to be slept on. Puns aside, the film lives up to its name with a dreamy aesthetic and storyline that creeps under your skin. We start with Marlene playing a game of […]
Arrow Video
Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams – The Dungeonmaster (1984) & Cellar Dweller (1988)
Empire International Pictures was a movie studio and distribution outfit founded by American B-movie mogul Charles “Charlie” Band in 1983. Even if you haven’t heard of Empire, there’s a good chance you’ll have heard of some of their genre film output, and perhaps even watched some of it – during […]
The Game Trilogy (1978/9) Classic Japanese Carnage with a Huge Slice of Cool (Review)
Standing at 6 feet tall and having an effortlessly cool demeanour, Yusaku Matsuda stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries in every sense of the term. His baby face masked by the always present sunglasses and a slender physique gave manga and anime artists their template for the next two […]
The Lighthouse (2019): a 4K illumination for a modern cult classic (Review)
Aptly for a director so invested in orally told tales – superstitions, fisherman’s stories, Icelandic sagas – Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse is already accruing its own legend. It’s one of the few modern films to have a legendarily tough shoot, all of which is unpacked in the three-part making-of documentary […]
The Street Fighter Trilogy (1974) Kicks, Quips and Boatload of Cool (Review)
Naked Lunch (1991): a special edition big enough to feed anyone’s addiction (Review)
One of the great things about Arrow Video’s Blu-Ray special edition of David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch is that the package does the same thing as the film: it uses cutting-edge technology to immerse you in the stranger corners of a now-lost era. In Cronenberg’s case, that meant using Chris Walas’s […]
The Suspicious Death of a Minor (1975) Giallo Essentials: White Edition (Review)
The term ‘Giallo’ tends to evoke images of black gloves, much darkness, and a de-emphasis on the plot in favour of lurid colours. A viewer could be forgiven, therefore, for their surprise when coming across a film labeled Giallo that features jaunty music, comedy pratfalls and gymnastics, and an engagement […]
Boyhood (2014) Epic Achievement that Somehow lacks a Definitive Direction (Review)
The Sisters Brothers (2018) A Great Characterful Western for Fans New & Old (Review
DotCom for Murder (2002) Dial M for Mastorakis (Review)
The advent of the internet, as with all great advancements in communication technology, brought with it myriad new ways for nefarious individuals to find and lure in their unsuspecting victims. Those of you who, like me, have grown up in the digital age will undoubtedly be all-too-familiar with how the […]