When France was occupied by Nazi Germany from 1940 to 1944 all aspects of life were affected, and cinema was no exception as the Germans set up Continental Films to provide the French populace with an escape from the horrors of real life. Most of films made were harmless escapism, […]
Ethan Lyon
Libido (1965) Argento may be The Artist, but Gastaldi is The Man
Giallo is known by its directors – Fulci, Bava, Argento, maybe Sergio Martino if you do some digging, but someone just as important is screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi. Active for nearly thirty years in Italian cinema, he penned the scripts for some of the most iconic gialli, his many credits including […]
Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Imagine Film Fest 2025)
You can’t move for nostalgia in the cinema today. People go to the movies to escape into the reassuring, and studios are only too happy to supply them with cinematic safety blankets made from IPs of old, the comic book hero, the remake, the TV reboot. But for those of […]
Daughters of Darkness (1971) Beautiful Euro-Horror with a rich fantastique symbolism
Daughters of Darkness is forever associated with Mark Gatiss’s exceptional 2012 documentary Horror Europa – say what you will about his lacklustre attempts to keep A Ghost Story for Christmas alive. The programmes he made in the early 2010s about the history of cinematic horror are essential viewing for anyone […]
Take From Me (2025) Solemn Indie Horror Full of Promise & Heart
At one point during Take From Me, the enigmatic Elizabeth asks our dishevelled lead John “Are you addicted to death?” Horror and addiction have been bedfellows since the genre turned reflexive in the 60s and 70s. Perhaps the greatest of these is Ferrara’s The Addiction, a uniquely personal take on […]
The Degenerate: The Life and Films of Andy Milligan (Frightfest 2025)
Andy Milligan was my cinematic find of 2024. I went into Seeds blind, knowing only that I had been asked to talk about it for the Calibre 9 From Outer Space podcast. What I discovered was the work of a real artist. Certainly, the dialogue sounded like it was recorded […]
32 Short Films about Glenn Gould (1993) Challenges the Grand Tradition of the Biopic
How should a biopic go about expressing a person’s life: from cradle to grave, or a hop skip and a jump through chronology for what feels most relevant to the subject? 2023 offered us Maestro and Oppenheimer – two films that portrayed the lives of two titanic figures of 20th […]
Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA (1960 to 1976) Socialism Among the Stars
Eureka have scored another tremendous success with their “Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA” boxset that brings four fascinating glimpses at a Socialist approach to the genre beyond the traditional USSR output of On the Silver Globe, Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel or Stalker. The first entry, Silent Star, was one […]
Motern Madness: Matt Farley’s Cult Films Hit the Big Screen in the UK
I never know what I’m going to get into when my mate asks me to watch something. His taste is, usually, exceptional. My love of Indian cinema is in no small part thanks to him forcing me to watch Main Hoon Na. It’s not perfect; sometimes I find myself wincing […]
Let’s Go Karaoke! (Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2025)
Last year, the man who invented the earliest prototype of the karaoke machine passed away. Shigeichi Negishi never patented his Sparko Box, content instead to feel “a lot of pride in seeing his idea evolve into a culture of having fun through song around the world.” And certainly, karaoke’s joy […]