When’s the best time to watch a prequel? You’d think it’d be natural to get them in first, and plenty of people do just that. I have several friends who’ve introduced their kids to Star Wars in chronological order, from the crushing disappointment of The Phantom Menace, to the crushing […]
Movies & Documentaries
Parvulos (Fantasia 2024)(Review)
Isaac Ezban is a regular on festival circuits, with films like Evil Eye and The Similars establishing him as an interesting, if under-seen, contributor to Mexican horror. His latest film, Parvulos, is his longest feature at just under two hours, and he shows considerable ambition with this dystopian tale of […]
Animalia Paradoxa (Fantasia 2024) (Review)
Think of any dystopian environment you’ve either read in a book or seen on screen. How do they typically come to be that way? Usually, it’s the result of humanity sliding into autocracy, or a cataclysmic environmental event, or a rapid increase in social injustices. It’s unclear as to how […]
Dial (2024)(Short Film) The Horror of Isolation (Review)
Grief, mental illness and haunting are common bedfellows in cinema, and major feature films like The Babadook, The Father and Relic have interwoven these tropes, manifesting them as something potentially supernatural. Into this fertile emotional ground comes Dial – a short film by writer-director Josh Trett that tells the story […]
The Tenants (Fantasia 2024)(Review)
There’s something depressingly relatable in seeing art about housing crises from other countries as it’s something that hits people so personally, knowing that we’re not alone. The sad part is obviously that it’s happening at all, with little social security, and this is the feeling that dominates The Tenants – […]
Point Break 4K (1991) 100% Pure Adrenaline from Kathryn’s Bigelow’s Iconic Crime Thriller (Review)
The cultural reputation of Point Break might characterise it as a silly film, with gunplay resting alongside homoeroticism, and some new age, hippy-dippy mumbo-jumbo bound up with surfing (Hot Fuzz has a lot to answer for). If one looks closely at the film itself however, Kathryn Bigelow’s action heist/buddy flick […]
Cuckoo (Fantasia 2024) (Review)
Cuckoos are brood parasites that lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species and, once hatched, the chicks are raised by the unsuspecting host parents, who frequently reject their own eggs and young as a result. To Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), a teenage girl forced to move to the […]
Risky Business (1983) An Interesting And Unusual Start To Tom Cruise’s Stardom (Review)
I think I went into Risky Business with the wrong impression. I didn’t grow up in the 1980s, I grew up in the 2010s, so my view of ’80s teen comedies has been entirely shaped by John Hughes and the Brat Pack. I think of films like Ferris Bueller’s Day […]
Santa Sangre (1989): Carnage at the Circus in Jodorowsky’s Chaotic Classic (Review)
What can you say about Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre, or more specifically, what can you say about it that isn’t said somewhere on this enormous four-disc Blu-Ray from Severin Films? The scale of this release is extraordinary, and includes the film itself in 4K and standard forms, a commentary with […]
Mississippi Mermaid (1969): Truffaut’s Misunderstood Tale of Mystery and Erotic Obsession (Review)
Released to Blu-ray by Radiance Films this week is Mississippi Mermaid, a 1969 Hitchcockian thriller from François Truffaut that tells of an obsessive love affair between Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve. By the late 1960s, Truffaut had long since earnt his spurs as an acclaimed auteur within the French New […]