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 […]
Reviews
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 […]
Superman (2025) Rebooting for a more colourful universe
Is it a bird! Is it a plane! No, it’s James Gunn – the strange filmmaker with a Troma background who’s come to DC Studios from another comic book franchise, and as the writer-director of Superman, he’s rebooting the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), into the new DC Universe (DCU), for […]
Films by Zoltán Huszárik (1963-1979): life, death and one incredible box set
As Blu-Ray upgrades go, it’s a hell of a glow-up. Second Run released the Hungarian director Zoltán Huszárik’s debut feature Szindbád on DVD in 2011; its cult in Anglophone countries can be largely attributed to this, given that neither the film nor the works of its source author Gyula Krúdy […]
Reputation (2024) A Micro-Budget Feature with a Rising Star
Released on digital platforms from Monday 28th July, Reputation is the feature debut from Martin Law. Its star is James Nelson-Joyce, a Liverpudlian actor who, after some solid supporting work – in productions such as Jimmy McGovern’s Time, Stephen Merchant’s Outlaws, Steven Knight’s A Thousand Blows, and the Brink’s Mat […]