Acclaim and success are very different beasts when considering the director, sometimes neither matter and the films they made that chimed with them the most have been overlooked or lost in the shuffle. While he has gone down in cinematic legend with the Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs, it was […]
Rob Simpson
Chief Editor
Host of the Uncut Network. With a love of movies kicked off by Hong Kong Action and Claymation Monsters, Rob has forever been cradled in the bosom of Cinema. Rob has his hands in many a pie, including no budget film making.
His Girl Friday (1940) One of the finest comedies ever directed (Review)
As Howard Hawk’s His Girl Friday opens, we are graced with a silent film style inter-title that announces that the following takes place in a world where Journalists have become an unscrupulous kind who care little of the people around them. What now reads as on-the-nose satire, back in 1934 […]
Call of Heroes (2016) Historical Martial Arts romp with a dark edge (review)
Hong Kong Legends was a beacon for fans of martial arts cinema, even though they focused on Golden Harvest and overlooked the Shaw Brothers, their early DVD exploits provided ample chance for us fans to see films that we wouldn’t have otherwise. With their unfortunate demise, Cine Asia rose to […]
The Man Between (1953) A tense prototype for the behind enemy lines political thriller (Review)
The cooperative forces of the internet and a golden age of home video have put the idea of filmmakers known for one film to bed. Carol Reed was one such director. He was celebrated for the Third Man but with the strength of the Blu-ray market, the likes of Fallen […]
Cinema Eclectica’s Top Movies of 2016
As with any year, the past 12 months have had their share of running themes. 2016 was far from a banner year for the superhero film, outside the fourth-wall-breaking filth of Deadpool (just missed out on a top 20 slot), there were an awful lot of middling to average films. […]
Fright Night (1985) Effortlessly cool 1980s comedy-horror classic (Review)
Horror directors in the 1970s enjoyed expressing themselves through the language of exploitation, fast forward to the 1990s and beyond and a sea change was made towards a more cynical, cheap, production line designed to make as big a profit as possible. The 1980s where an anomaly, unlikely to ever […]
The Squid and the Whale (2005) one of the most endearing examples of divorce-cinema (Review)
In a director interview, Noah Baumbach says of his newly issued Criterion Collection film, the Squid and the Whale, that he typically finds the writing process laborious but in the scripting of his 2005 film it was a deeply physical experience – exorcising demons that have laid dormant for years. […]
The Blue Lamp (1950) The movie that birthed the influential Dixon of Dock Green (Review)
Whether or not the name is familiar, Dixon of Dock Green is one of the most influential British television shows ever. Without it, the police procedural on both small and big screens would be a very different proposition. But before any of that, it too had its own genesis and […]
The Wailing (2016) Skin-Crawling Classical Horror, Korean Style (Review)
Once upon a time horror meant something. It was more of a genre than the series of boxes that need to be ticked to provoke an emotional reaction like it is now. The words “it’s terrible, wasn’t even scary”, have become an epitaph of its downfall. The decline of narrative went […]
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) The sleeper hit of John Carpenter’s Killer Run (Review)
John Carpenter’s filmography is a curious animal, subject to both wild scrutiny and glorious celebration. What’s more, his work has been remade, twisted and contorted by both genre stalwarts and studio remit with wildly different results – from the heinous [the] Fog to the solidly entertaining Assault on Precinct 13 […]