If there’s anyone out there who still doubts that Michelangelo Antonioni was a genius, consider this: he made the British overcome their prurience. On its 1966 release, his classic Blow-Up was a substantial hit in the UK among audiences who were not primarily interested in watching the latest film from […]
Movies & Documentaries
Monster (2003) Brutal and Beautifully Performed Serial Killer Psychodrama (Blu-Ray Review)
Hello everyone, it’s Alex here, and this is the first non-Classic Film Kid piece I’ve ever done, so I now have free reign to talk about whatever I want. So of course I begin with innocence and purity by reviewing a film about serial killer Aileen Wuornos in a life […]
Hellbender (2022): Feel the Chaos of a Teenage Witch (Blu-Ray Review)
Hellbender is the sixth feature film from the Adams family (made up of Toby Poser, John Adams and Zelda Adams) and their third in the horror genre. Following its release on Shudder in February, it arrives on DVD and digital through Acorn Media International making it their most readily available […]
The Big Chill (1983): nostalgic, reflective, snarky and full of love – a warm hug of a film (Blu-Ray Review)
College days, or university days as they are known in the UK, can be among the most memorable and formative that people experience. The friendships made, the ambitions held, the ideals believed in. Sometimes these days help shape our lives, other times we wonder what happened to the days and […]
Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (2021) Entertainingly Rustic Genre Mashup… with Caveats (VOD review)
I do love a good mashup of genres in a movie. From Horror Musicals to Sci-Fi Actioners, a blending of ideas and rules often hits my cinematic sweet spot and probably explains my penchant for Korean cinema. So when I heard of Edwin’s 2021 Indonesian film Vengeance is Mine, All […]
Her Way (2022) Sentimental and melancholic but truthful (Cinema & VOD Review)
Quite an earnest film about sex work – I imagine – is more an unflinching look at working simply to survive. Marie is a single mother, trying to make enough money to send her son to college in the hopes that he can become a chef. Her current income cannot […]
Root Letter (2022) Japanese Video Game turned evocative directorial debut (Cinema Review)
Two teenagers exchange letters. Both have considerable emotional baggage. The primary setting is the Deep South town of Baton Rouge, Louisiana (with some time in Tulsa, Oklahoma). Soft and lustrous lighting illuminates the hot and humid surroundings, prompting a dreamy sense of inertia in which contentment and frustration jostle for […]
Man without a Star (1955)The Most Brutal Western in the Old Studio System? (Review)
Many Classical Hollywood directors have fallen victim to the passage of time. For every revered director like Alfred Hitchcock or Howard Hawks, there is an Edgar G. Ulmer or Jacques Tourneur. Like the latter, King Vidor has become less and less talked about over time despite being quite a successful […]
The Weapon The Hour The Motive (1972) A left turn too many for this rare Giallo (Blu-Ray Review)
Once upon a time, the Giallo as a sub-genre was primarily lost to obscurity – available only to those engaged in the tape trading scene. Even during the DVD boom era, this ever-sleazy wave of Italian murder mysteries never managed to break through. It has only been during the blu-ray […]
The Feast (2021): the first Welsh-language horror movie doesn’t want for ambition (Cinema Review)
The BFI currently determines which films are eligible to receive tax breaks using two tests: whether a film is British-financed, and whether it is “culturally British”. Breaking that down further, it is straightforward to think of films that are culturally Scottish, culturally English or culturally Irish, but very hard to […]