The Wages of Fear is a masterpiece of suspense by director/co-writer Clouzot, which keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat with each bump and turn in the road. It is not hard to see why it won multiple awards, and why, even today, it features in many Top […]
Reviews
Bad Day For The Cut (2017) Coen-like thriller tropes, sturdy social realism, and unique Irish flavour (Review)
When the mother he both lived with and doted on is violently bludgeoned to death in an apparent home invasion, middle-aged and seemingly mild-mannered farmer Donal (Nigel O’Neill) takes his shotgun and newly restored campervan and sets out from their remote farmstead looking for answers and revenge. What he comes […]
Blue Collar (1978) the bleakest picture of the working week in American cinema (Review)
Not all of Paul Schrader’s movies are pitiless examinations of masculinity in crisis, but when one of them kicks off with Bo Diddley singing ‘I’m A Man’, you’d better believe that’s a statement. Now reissued on Powerhouse, Blue Collar is the tale of three car factory workers who hatch a […]
Charley Varrick (1973) The casual appeal of Walter Matthau (Review)
Powerhouse’s new Blu-Ray of Don Siegel’s 1973 thriller Charley Varrick comes with the impressive set of extras this label has set as a standard for their reissues of cult films. Sometimes, though, the information you get from those extras doesn’t quite tally up. The feature-length making-of documentary Last of the […]
Phenomena (1985) Dario Argento side steps the Giallo to bring the wildest and most fun horror of his career (Review)
Whether or not he was the best director remains to be seen, when the topic of the Giallo comes up one of the first names to come up is Dario Argento. Even if his career took a near-legendary nosedive in the early 1990s, his peak stands among the best runs […]
New World (2013) The Perfect entry point to Korean Gangster Movies (Review)
Crime movies are a captivating microcosm, there are vast differences to be found depending on where in the world a specific title was made. When you go further afield than America and the UK, there are big differences to be found. Hong Kong Crime Movies saw the ascendancy of a […]
The Apartment (1960) Billy Wilder and the rebellion in Romance (Review)
In a 1995 interview packaged as part of Arrow Academy’s new restoration of The Apartment, Billy Wilder remembers a scene from David Lean’s Brief Encounter, a ‘black and white, very simple’ movie that he considers one of that director’s greatest. He and I have very different memories of it. In […]
78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene (2017) Whether it is a glorified extra or a film of its own right remains to be seen (Review)
Is there a scene more ingrained into the popular consciousness than the shower scene from Psycho? That question is answered by Documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe in his film 78/52. He applies a laser focus on those 78 setups and 52 cuts to discuss this watershed moment for horror from every […]
Pulp (1972) The Michael Caine Noir that counts Jarvis Cocker and JG Ballard among its fans (Review)
It is a film about the abuse of a young girl by people in positions of power and the cover-up this corruptible high society instigate to ensure they are never held to account for the crime they have committed. It is a film that concludes with the answers being found […]
The Cremator (1968) an absolute essential to watch for all Czech New Wave Fans (Review)
Opening on extreme close-ups of a leopard trapped within a cage, Juraj Herz’s ‘The Cremator’ is the cinematic equivalent of a black hole, it sucks the audience into the warped imagination of Karl Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrušínský), who is out on a day trip with his family. On paper, that doesn’t […]