There can be a curse for any film with a great title. For every Hobo with a Shotgun, there is a Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death – i.e. a film that wholly delivers on its title’s promise versus a film that falls completely short of it. That’s […]
Movies & Documentaries
The Village Detective: A Song Cycle (2021) The Ocean Gives Up Its Mysteries (Review)
In 2016, a crew of Icelandic fishermen operating in the North Atlantic Ocean, dredged up something surprising from the seabed – four decaying reels of film, semi-preserved by the ocean’s natural resources of hydrogen sulphide, that set innovative documentarian Bill Morrison, of Dawson City: Frozen Time fame, on a fascinating […]
Allonsanfàn (1974) Mastroianni Dons The Mask of Anarchy (Review)
Once again, Radiance have uncovered another gem from 1970s Italian Cinema. They’ve dusted it down, smartened it up and packed it with extras and released it to Blu-ray this week. But this one isn’t a poliziotteschi or a giallo, this is Allonsanfàn, a classy period drama writer/director siblings Paulo and […]
Paths of Glory (1957) Kubrick’s Antiwar Masterpiece in 4K (Review)
Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series was formative in developing my knowledge and love of cinema. I glance over at my collection and think of how Eureka introduced me to F.W Murnau’s Tabu, Douglas Sirk’s The Tarnished Angels and a host of lesser seen Billy Wilder films. I associate that Masters […]
Bad Biology (2008) The basket case behind Basket Case does his rom-com (Review)
How far does the grungy spirit of 80s horror reach? There’s an argument to be made for retro-conscious thrillers like The Guest or It Follows slumping over their synthesisers and going great lengths to resurrect the straight-forward thrills of years past in a cool new chasis’s. Yet the spit and sawdust of the grindhouse […]
Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (1981) Formerly Banned Video Nasty launches Severin in the UK (Review)
The die-hard cult genre cinema fans that make up The Geek Show’s reader base will undoubtedly already be deeply familiar with the name Severin Films, but for those of you who aren’t, allow me to quickly introduce you to your latest obsession. Severin are a US-based physical media label renowned […]
Lone Star (1996) Lightning Paced Tour of John Sayles’s America (Review)
John Sayles, the Don of American independent cinema, has dedicated much of his career to examining and exploring buried and ‘unofficial’ histories. This fascination, this need to tell, has taken Sayles far, from the coal-mining hollers of West Virginia (Matewan) to the tundras of Alaska (Limbo) to Latin/Central America (Men with Guns) and out […]
A Wolfpack Called Ernesto (2023): Experimental look at Mexican Gang Culture (Review)
As one of the subjects of Everardo Gonzáles’s new film A Wolfpack Called Ernesto puts it, “you get involved by looking”. Where theatre has monologues and novels have first-person narration, film has the close-up as its signature method of encouraging you to identify with a character’s emotions. You could chart […]
History of Evil (2024) A Thoroughly American Horror Story (Review)
If you haven’t heard anything about the latest “Shudder Original”, History of Evil (2024), prior to its recent arrival on the platform, then you’re not alone; seemingly little information was made public on the film prior to its release, aside from its cast list and a vague, one-sentence plot summary. […]
Eureka (2024) The Glorious Antithesis of the Issue Movie (Review)
Slow, slow, slow. That is the word, the descriptor, that has been repeated over and over in reviews of Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso’s masterpiece, reoccurring with fevered intensity even in those most positive of responses, and usually attached to a warning that the audience will need to recalibrate their expectations. […]