Nightmare at Noon is an all-guns-blazing action-horror spectacle that is so explosive, so gung-ho, and so deeply, proudly American that it could only have been made by a Greek man. Co-written and directed by genre veteran Nico Mastorakis, a man whose decades-spanning career has covered everything from action to slasher […]
Movies & Documentaries
Big Time Gambling Boss (1968) An Essential for anyone with a penchant for Yakuza Cinema (Review)
Big Time Gambling Boss is the fourth entry in the Bakuchi-uchi series (a series that ran for ten films in total between 1967 to 1972 and was released by Toei studios). Starring Koji Tsurata (Sympathy for the Underdog) as a suave and chivalrous gambling Yakuza general, he has everything we’ve […]
The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971): Work is Hell (Review)
A new year brings a new Blu-ray distributor in the shape of Radiance Films whose first slate of releases includes The Working Class Goes to Heaven, Elio Petri’s brilliant 1971 polemic on totalitarian capitalism and the post-war Italian ‘Economic Miracle’, released January 2nd. The film reunites Petri with Gian Maria […]
Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge (2022): The Continuation of an Unexpected Parody Horror Franchise (Review)
Anthology horror films have a surprisingly long legacy, with the first one, Unheimliche Geschichten, being traced back to 1919. Arguably, Dead of Night from 1945 popularised the genre before the boom in the 60s and 70s, the latter of which had its own Dead of Night that went direct to […]
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) Unbalanced and Unwieldy, if still Enthralling and Spectacular
As the sequel to the biggest box office success of all time, Avatar, a return to the big screen by director James Cameron after a(nother) long absence, and a return to the ground-breaking and awe-inspiring world of Pandora, The Way of Water comes with multiple expectations. Laser projection 3D and […]
Adrift In Tokyo (2007) – An understated gem thankfully rediscovered (Blu-Ray Review)
Writer/Director Satoshi Miki opens his film with a curious moment, as law student Fumiya Takemura (Joe Odagiri) hopes buying three-colour toothpaste will save him from his rock-bottom circumstances. The situation reveals itself when loan shark Aiichiro Fukuhara (Tomokazu Miura) bursts in, demanding the debt he’s owed be paid back in […]
Mississippi Masala (1991): cross-culture romance with a young Denzel Washington (Review)
Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, released on Blu-Ray by Criterion UK, is a nice film. Befuddlingly so, in fact. Nair’s only prior feature was Salaam Bombay! in 1988, a story of Indian street children gritty enough to have critics hailing her as the heir to Vittorio de Sica. Her second film […]
Tangerine (2015) – a lovely LGBT-positive lo-fi Christmas romp (Blu-Ray Review)
With the festive season well underway, and Christmas itself rapidly approaching, I have no doubt that most people who celebrate will have already watched at least one classic holiday picture this month by the time this review is released. Of course, many viewers choose to deviate from the well-established Yuletide […]
Nanny (2022) Bold Debut Subverts Stereotypical Supernatural Expectations (Review)
In Nikatyu Jusu’s debut feature Nanny, motherhood, race, class and West African folklore are explored wrapped up in a fiercely smart and subtly supernatural package, that manages to subvert stereotypical expectations. Anna Diop plays Aisha, a woman who has come to the United States from Senegal, in the hopes of […]
Fall (2022) Emotionally contrived with White-Knuckle Thrills (Review)
Today the subject on the table is Fall, a tense and self-contained survival thriller directed by Scott Mann, which sees an ex-climber named Becky in a depressive episode after her husband dies in a climbing accident. In an effort to raise her spirits, her friend Hunter suggests that they both […]