It does need to be said: Eureka is doing a wonderful thing for all of us Hong Kong Action fans. From the stone-cold classics of Police Story to adjacent obscurities like Joseph Kuo, Hong Kong Legends is alive and well through Masters of Cinema parent company (and 88 films). A […]
Movies & Documentaries
Moon 66 Questions (2021): subtly strange carer’s story that resists easy comparisons (Cinema Review)
Recently there’s been a surprising number of films about people with degenerative diseases, an apparently uncommercial subgenre that’s actually produced a number of sleeper hits and Oscar winners. If Jacqueline Lentzou’s Moon, 66 Questions doesn’t join them on the Kodak Theater stage, it will be for the noblest of reasons: […]
Execution in Autumn (1972) Melodrama, Sadness and the Taiwanese Experience (Review)
Before directors like Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang reinvented Taiwanese cinema with their new wave films in the 80s (such as Dust in the Wind and Terrorizers respectively) the Taiwan film industry was much more closed off to the Western world. Despite directors like King Hu gaining a lot of […]
Kill Them All and Come Back Alone (1968): The Dirty Half-Dozen of the Spaghetti Western (Review)
Released to Blu-ray on Studio Canal’s Cult Classics label comes a rip-roaring Spaghetti Western from 1968, Enzo G. Castellari’s wonderfully titled Kill Them All and Come Back Alone starring Chuck Connors, the rangy former basketball and baseball player and star of popular Western TV serials The Rifleman and Branded and […]
Outside the Law (1920): dated depictions can’t overshadow Tod Browning’s genius (Review)
Readers, what emotion comes over you when I ask you to imagine Lon Chaney playing a character called “Ah Wing”? A shudder of unease, I’d imagine, one of a very different kind to the shudders he produced in his more famous horror roles. And yet it’s worth indulging Outside the […]
Scare Us (2021) The Pick and Mix of Anthology Horror (Review)
The anthology is an interesting sub-genre. Classics like Twilight Zone: The Movie, Trick ‘r Treat and more recent offerings such as Bad Candy, Ghost Stories and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark have demonstrated both the potential benefits and the pitfalls of telling multiple stories within a single overarching […]
Dead Man (1995) A wholly unique surrealist Western (Review)
For an extended period of time, the Western was the United States’ most beloved genre of film. Despite its popularity briefly dying as film transitioned between silent films and talkies, it was kicked back into the spotlight with John Ford’s Stagecoach; from that point onwards many directors such as Ford, […]
The Righteous (2021) Neo-Gothic Religious Chamber Horror Inside (Review)
It’s always a curious proposition when a known actor steps behind the camera: what is it about “this project”, in particular, that made them want to make the leap? Some see it as the next step in the evolution of their career, while others have passion projects up their sleeve, […]
Demonia (1990) One for the true Lucio Fulci completionist (Review)
Giallo and Italian Horror legend Lucio Fulci marked a return to cinema in this early 90’s nunsploitation flick – but is its reputation as Fulci’s weakest film deserved or has the last 30 years been kind to the Italian maestro’s forgotten work? We open in fifteenth-century Italy, as a group […]
Enter the Void (2009): a city symphony in 21st-century neon (Review)
Gaspar Noé’s new film Vortex, currently on release in UK cinemas, is shocking audiences in perhaps the only way Noé can shock people at this juncture: by removing his usual graphic violence and unsimulated sex in favour of a sensitive exploration of dementia and death. There is another film called […]