The release of a book about Where Eagles Dare by no less a high-culture luminary than Geoff Dyer has us wondering: when did the war movie stop being a pillar of mainstream entertainment? The simple answer might be once the politics of war became divisive, but recent films like Lincoln […]
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Police Story 1 & 2 (1985) Simply put, the Best Action Movie Ever Made (Review)
Iron Monkey (1993) One of the best entry points of Kung-Fu Cinema (Review)
The Defiant Ones (1958) one of the most crushing, pessimistic examples of the Hays Code in action (Review)
This summer, you might have already seen two very different people, chained together, forced to co-operate in order to escape their captivity. They even climbed out of a mud-pit; if you weren’t thinking about The Defiant Ones (about two chain-gang prisoners, one white and one black, in a similar mess) […]
Inherit the Wind (1960) “something to believe in – which is not always the same as the truth” (Review)
In the mid 1950s, at the height of Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist campaign of political repression, a bold new courtroom drama opened on Broadway that allegorised a dire incident from America’s Christian fundamentalist history to excoriate the current climate of fear and repression. The play’s impact on the culture of America […]
Allure (2017) A modern equivalent to ’90s psychological thrillers like Single White Female (Review)
The Old Dark House (1932) proof that James Whale was a master of intelligent, witty thrills and chills (Review)
ReBorn (2016) Tak Sakaguchi’s return is a case of mixed blessings (Review)
Tak Sakaguchi retiring was a bit of a running joke once upon a time, with news reports flipping sides on a near-daily basis. “Today he isn’t retiring, tomorrow he is”. Unfortunately, the ‘speed master’, friend of Sion Sono, and surprisingly good actor within the martial arts community faded from our […]
House (1977) Completely within its own erratic, mesmerising orbit (Review)
There’s a tiresome tendency among Westerners to squeal “wtf japan lol” every time a Japanese film exhibits a minor eccentricity, but sometimes you have to acknowledge a film is very strange. That’s the case with 1977’s House, now released on Blu-Ray by Eureka Masters of Cinema. House was a massive hit […]