In the years that followed the move from Shanghai to Hong Kong as the heart of the Chinese film industry, following the “Cultural Revolution” in 1949, Shaw Brothers wanted to modernise their studio by bringing in new and fresh directors and stars, tying them to contracts and giving them regular […]
Movies & Documentaries
A Woman of Paris (1923) Chaplin’s First Drama Film Falls Short
A Woman of Paris (also known with the subtitle: A Drama of Fate) was Charlie Chaplin’s second directed feature. He made the odd choice, given how his fame was based on comedy, of wanting to direct a completely dramatic work and avoid comedy entirely. The film begins with the main […]
Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972) The Italian Gore Master’s Pivotal Horror
For anyone who has made the deep dive into horror or lowbrow Italian cinema, it’s hard to find a person who doesn’t harbour an affection for the dirty, sleazy, violently imaginative work of Lucio Fulci. He’s a director who’s gory nightmares rank him among Mario Bava and Dario Argento as […]
Noise (2017): getting to the truth of true crime
Sakka is a streaming service whose mission is to provide a global platform for independent Japanese films. This would have been laudable enough back in the DVD era, when a small handful of labels decided which non-Anglophone films would be distributed in the UK. It’s even more vital these days, […]
The Ugly Stepsister (2025) a body horror that goes beyond the fairy tale
In a cinematic landscape oversaturated with safe reboots and sanitized fairy tales, The Ugly Stepsister bursts through the doors and screams in your face as if to say, “No more!” Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt takes the familiar Cinderella fairytale and rips it apart at the seams, stitching it back together […]
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 […]
Dead Mail (2024) 80s Horror, Liminal Dread & A Post Office Under Siege
A bloodstained note finds its way into a 1980s post office. We’re all a little ambitious, aren’t we? Many films try to capture the aesthetics from fondly remembered decades, Dead Mail finds a beautiful balance between honouring a 1980s aesthetic and crafting a pace that doesn’t make anything seem too […]
AUM: The Cult at the End of the World (2025) The Danger of Laughing at Extremists
Debuting at Sundance earlier this year, Aum: The Cult at the End of the World brings renewed attention to Tokyo’s infamous 1995 sarin attack, balancing a wealth of archival footage from Aum’s rise with some occasionally more heavy-handed true crime notes. Based on an eponymous book by Western journalists, Andrew […]
The End (2025) Opening night at the end of the world in barmy musical morality tale
It’s opening night at the end of the world, and rehearsals for the final curtain are getting shaky, much as they were in Joshua Oppenheimer’s unforgettably bold documentary features. His startling Indonesian genocide diptych (The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence) depicted some alarming remembrances of one of […]
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 […]