Japanese cinema is known for its eccentrics, whether its Seijun Suzuki, Takashi Miike, Sion Sono, or the many people keeping the splatterpunk movement alive in the still-thriving V-Cinema scene that gave birth to Miike career some twenty-odd years ago. Sitting at the top of that tree, however, is Terou Ishii. […]
Movies & Documentaries
Bleak Night (2014)Simply put, Korean cinema at its very best (Review)
Korean cinema came out of nowhere in the early 2000′s, blowing up conceptions for what action thrillers can be. They were the perfect antidote to a Hollywood system that was (and still is) becoming increasingly one-dimensional. In turn, giving directors like Park Chan-Wook, Kim Jee-Woon & Bong Joon-Ho the chance […]
White Dog (1982): Samuel Fuller’s Timeless attack on institutional racism (Review)
Slavery has been a hot topic in cinema over the past 18 months, what with critical & commercial darlings in 12 years a slave and Django unchained bringing racial inequality into the public discourse. With this social sickness being given an unheralded amount of attention there could be no greater […]
Wake in Fright (1971) All the validation ‘Ozploitation’ ever needed (Review)
For a long time, Wake in Fright (aka Outbreak) was regarded as one of the ‘great lost Australian films’. Although critically celebrated across the board, its infamously unsympathetic presentation of Australia, unflinching hunting scenes and poor box office saw it lost to history. Back in 2009, Ted Kotcheff’s film was […]
For Those in Peril (2013): Difficult Scottish drama in a minefield of styles (Review)
Not to be confused with the Ealing film of the same name, Paul Wright’s 2013’s Feature debut For Those in Peril is more of an amalgamation of Baltasar Kormakur’s The Deep and Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt than it is a call back to Ealing. George Mackay stars as Aaron, teenager […]
Fellini’s Roma (1972): a poetic, visual painting of Roman life (Review)
Masters of Cinema released one of their first Fellini discs with the underappreciated Il Bidone, now comes their second release in as many months – the director’s esoteric microcosm of Roma and one of his most acclaimed films of the 1970s. The film drafts historical moments from pre-and-post war Italy, […]
The Killers (1964): Remake of Classic Noir triumphs through its characters (Review)
The second adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway short, the Killers is the latest release from Arrow’s Academy label. The first adaptation was the feature acting début of Burt Lancaster and is regarded as a film noir classic; this 1964 adaptation directed Don Siegel is a much more traditional crime thriller, […]
Phantom of the Paradise (1974): De Palma’s Phantasmagorical Rock-Opera-Horror (Review)
Despite starting his directing career in the 60s with a string of Robert De Niro collaborations, Brian de Palma is of a class of genre directors who rose to prominence in the 1970s and 80s that have become known for a specific type of film. That specific film is a […]
Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) The Anti-Vampire Movie (Review)
Dead Man and Ghost Dog saw Indie favourite Jim Jarmusch bring his quirky idiosyncrasies to more traditionally visceral genres. Ghost Dog is worlds away from a traditional Yakuza or Samurai film, and the same is true for Dead Man with westerns. His 12th feature, Only Lovers Left Alive continues that […]
John Dies at the End (2012): Surreal and Meaty, needs to be seen to be believed (Review)
Originally starting life as a web serial by the appropriately monikered David Wong, John Dies at the End has grown into a published novel (and a sequel This Book Is Full of Spiders), before being developed by Bubba Ho-Tep and Phantasm director Don Coscarelli. Now in 2014, Eureka films are […]