Day 1 of this style of article will always have the most storytelling, after all, transport and the stories therein have more meat on the bones than me regaling you, repeatedly, about my sleeping arrangements, recalling how battered and bruised I am from climbing down from and up to my […]
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
Frightfest 2025 Day 1 (Getting There, Appofeniacs, What She Doesn’t Know, Transcending Dimensions & In a Cold Vein)
Getting the nightbus isn’t the best way to get to anything, never mind your first in-person Frightfest, but when you are 247 miles away from the event and trying to be efficient, there are few better ways to go. So, its 12:45 am and I’m waiting outside the local BBC […]
Burning (Ot) (Fantasia International Film Festival 2025)
The famous quote about movies is that they are an “empathy machine”, and personally I believe that is at it truest within the genre space – whether it be marginalised voices or something from an otherwise culturally “uncharted” part of the world – horror has it all. Whenever I see […]
Noise (Fantasia International Film Festival 2025)
Horror works when it taps into something primal that you can feel in your bones. As dramatic as that sounds, it doesn’t need to something hard, deep or physical, it can invoke something mundane, twist it and there we have it – the uncanny. The uncanny is not only where […]
Hellcat (Fantasia International Film Festival 2025)
Isn’t it funny how time can heal all wounds in the world of movies? Just a few short years ago, the words “contained”, “chamber” or “one location horror” had utterly exhausted the genre audience – to the extent that people didn’t want to see another film set in one place […]
Hold the Fort (Fantasia International Film Festival 2025)
William Bagley’s Hold the Fort received its world premiere at the 2025 Fantasia Festival, and two movies in, the director of The Murder Podcast seems to be flying his flag for comedy horror. It’s a sub-genre that’s often deemed unbankable by the studio system and those who finance movies, so […]
The Well (Fantasia International Film Festival 2025)
Apocalypse cinema is fairly self-explanatory and, if you listen to certain fatalistic people in the media and on social media, we’re currently living through one. Post-apocalypse, in which the end has happened and society falls into a violent anarchy, has been endlessly mined as part of the zombie sub-genre – […]
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud (2024) E-Commerce and the End of the World
Many modern Japanese directors don’t operate in the same way as their Western counterparts. When a Western director goes quiet for years, it’s often assumed they’re struggling to get funding or have fallen out of favour. In Japan, while funding can absolutely be an issue, the industry has pivoted in […]
Yokohama BJ Blues (1981) Grim Satire of America’s influence on Japan
TThe 1980s was an odd era for Japanese cinema, caught between the end of one golden generation and the rise of another. That’s not to say nothing of note was produced—directors like Shōhei Imamura and Akira Kurosawa were still working, albeit sporadically, and a new generation was on the rise. […]
Self Revolutionary Cinematic Struggle (London International Fantastic Film Festival 2024)
Gakuryu Ishii’s second movie of the year is half a dozen things at once, with so much going on that it has taken me a week—after its premiere at the inaugural London International Fantastic Film Festival —to begin processing everything it offers. This menagerie exemplifies the ethos I yearn for […]