At one point during Take From Me, the enigmatic Elizabeth asks our dishevelled lead John “Are you addicted to death?” Horror and addiction have been bedfellows since the genre turned reflexive in the 60s and 70s. Perhaps the greatest of these is Ferrara’s The Addiction, a uniquely personal take on […]
Reviews
Who Wants to Kill Jessie (1966): Barbarella vs Superman in Communist Czechoslovakia!
A new Second Run disc is always an education, and this time it’s taught me what the genre term is for those strange, high-concept Czechoslovak comedies like Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself With Tea, or Happy End. In their native country, they’re called “crazy comedies”. That name might […]
Savages (2024) – An Engaging And Exuberant Stop-Motion Sophomore Film
As we know, stop-motion masters often take a while to work on their masterpieces. Both Henry Selick and Adam Elliot released acclaimed stop-motion films in 2009 yet it took them until recently to deliver another project. Claude Barras is no different – his debut My Life As A Courgette (replaced […]
Shoeshine (1946) Innocence Lost in the Remnants of World War II Rome
Released with a brand new 4K digital restoration by Criterion to Blu-ray and UHD this week, Shoeshine is a 1946 neorealist drama from Vittorio De Sica that has often been hailed as the Italian filmmaker’s first masterpiece and became the first film to win the Academy Award for Best International […]
Trouble Every Day (2001) Laying the foundations for New French Extremity
A pair of lovers are seen making out in the front seat of their car as an accompanying song slowly intensifies, “there’s trouble every day, trouble every day, trouble every day…”. The snogging sesh becomes increasingly passionate, bodies writhing around uncontrollably. Yet things start to creep beyond a so-called love, […]
Finis Terrae (1929) An Early Example of Realism in Film
I admit that I’m not as well versed in silent cinema as I should be. I’ve seen the odd classics like Metropolis and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but it’s mostly the out-there genre films and comedies are mostly what I’m aware of from the silent era. Out now on […]
Enemy Territory (1987): Arrow Rescue Another Empire Pictures Hidden Gem from VHS
1987’s Enemy Territory has often been described as a knockoff of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13. I decided to watch the two together, mainly since I hadn’t actually seen the latter film before. I originally planned on doing an in-depth comparison of the two, yet I found that similarities […]
The Banished (2024) Aussie Folk Horror a little lost amidst its stellar location & production design
The old ways are truly alive and well in the deep, dark corners of the Australian landscape – by which I mean, of course, the country’s great tradition of folkloric genre fare. The Banished, the new “folk horror” feature from Observance (2015) director Joseph Sims-Dennett, follows in the footsteps of […]
Essential Polish Animations (1957-1987) Testament to art made under difficult regimes
The reappraisal of animation as an art form, one capable of tackling adult themes and topics beyond its cereal-box public image, could be seen as the result of contemporary animated offerings. Adult Swim’s foul-mouthed comedies or the hyper-violence, sexuality and general intensity of anime (a subgenre rapidly entering the Western […]
Witness (1985) Harrison Ford’s Finest Hour
Upon first glance, Peter Weir’s Witness appears as a straightforward detective thriller with some romance and fish out of water comedy. An Amish mother and son, Rachel (Kelly McGillis) and Samuel (Lukas Haas) are involved in a murder investigation once Samuel witnesses a murder in Philadelphia. A homicide detective, John […]