Joe Dante is a beloved man, his films are among the most humble and darkly funny the genre world has to offer. His work is the point which light and dark intersect within the horror and science fiction cannons. That is true save for the exception, that one film which […]
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. Filthy
Kills on Wheels (2016) Two brilliant, searingly honest films flimsily stuck together (Review)
Representation is the big issue – who is having their stories told and which actors are being deprived of acting opportunities. Unfortunately, race and gender are as far as this dialogue has been extended. People who have lifelong disabilities either by accident or birth are seeing opportunities hoovered up by […]
Erik the Conqueror (1961) One of Cinema’s best visual artists turns to the Viking movie (Review)
In “Gli Imatori”, a visual essay featured in an uncharacteristically spartan selection of arrow video features, Michael Mackenzie comments on Italian cinema’s propensity to copy (Escape from New York becomes 2019: After the Fall of New York, for example) as this latest Mario Bava title released under the now transatlantic […]
The Saga of Anatahan (1953) The creativity of the final film and the significance of subtitles (Review)
Josef Von Sternberg’s final film was 1953’s The Saga of Anatahan, out today from Eureka’s Masters of Cinema. Its status as a final film and some of the choices it makes become very interesting when paired with a comment Brian De Palma made in his recent self-titled documentary. He stated […]
Wolf Warrior II (2017) Flag waving aside, this is the perfect antidote to modern action cinema (Review)
How American cinema has changed since the 1980s, I’ll use the action film as the conduit to make this point. Back then we had ridiculously over the top, jingoistic, star vehicles centred around a handful of names. Now, those films are shot and financed exclusively in Europe, the quality of […]
Doberman Cop (1977) A peculiar Sonny Chiba character in an endlessly odd police thriller (Review)
Once upon a time, it was instantly apparent when a film was based on a comic or graphic novel as those films concerned themselves with the super-powered and the otherworldly, then around the mid-1990s there was a paradigm shift and the nature of these titles became indistinguishable from the more […]
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) Dario Argento as the complete article (Review)
While far from the most prolific in the sub-genre, Dario Argento is synonymous with the Giallo. His directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, counts among the most acclaimed and beloved movies in the cycle – also, it is credited as popularising the style across the world. The man […]
Ip Man: The Final Fight (2013) Too many plots spoil this non-action kung fu broth (Review)
Folk Heroes are such huge figures of Chinese culture that to western eyes it may look like the milking of a particularly bounteous cash cow, look at Wong Fei Hung & Fong Sai-Yuk – between them we are looking at hundreds of titles. Both of those figures date back hundreds […]
Spotlight on a Murderer (1961) An anti-murder mystery from a famed French Surrealist (Review)
Whether it’s Agatha Christie or the likes of Law & Order and NCIS commanding TV schedules today, the murder mystery is one of the dominant genres in narrative media. Literally, every conceivable police department has been imagined in every major city, then there are the do-gooders who do a bit […]
Melody (1971) Proto-Moonrise Kingdom in the British School System (Review)
Also known as S.W.A.L.K., Waris Hussein’s adaptation of Alan Parker’s script, Melody is a film that belongs to a tradition of films that are just ripe for cheap jokes from film critics. It has been seen countless times before when films have a title that allows a cut-rate swipe at […]