As someone who works primarily in the documentary form, Peter Watkins probably doesn’t get asked where he gets his ideas. Not that there’s any need to – his 1974 epic Edvard Munch, released on Blu-Ray by Eureka Masters of Cinema, is the story of an intelligent man whose quest to […]
Reviews
Scott of the Antarctic (1948) A timelessly charming tale of survival (Review)
Ealing proving once again that didn’t just deal in black comedies concerned with a brand of pure Britannia that has since been consigned to history with Studio Canal’s release of Scott of the Antarctic. Sometimes Hitchcock editor, Charles Frend directs the now fabled story of Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated South […]
The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave (1971) & The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)(Review)
The Giallo, an influential style of Italian thriller originated during the 1960s, was not known for moral statements. That said, there’s a perfect summation of the sub-genres attitudes in one aside from 1972’s The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, the second of two films by Emilio Miraglia remastered and reissued […]
The Assassin (2016) The martial arts film as a beautiful arts saga (Review)
The Assassin (Hsiao-Hsien Hou) is loosely based on a seventh-century folk tale about a female assassin assigned with re-establishing equilibrium to the corrupt Tang Dynasty court. Shu Qi plays Nie Yinniang, the formidable female protagonist, who has been trained since the age of Ten to be a silent slayer for […]
Expresso Bongo (1959) Cliff Richard in pre-swinging London Rock N’ Roll Musical (Review)
Let us imagine the pitch: a hotshot young writer and a director whose career spans groundbreaking horror, gritty drama and sexploitation decide to make a musical. But not just any musical – this would be a musical powered by stage performances, rather than the familiar contrivance of people bursting into […]
Victoria (2015) The German Crime film that cracked the “one-take” nut (Review)
Even as far back as 1948, the one-take film was aspiration with Hitchcock’s Rope. An endeavour similar to Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman or Gustavo Hernández’s The Silent House, both he and Hitchcock used the practice of clean plates, filming areas or objects featuring no actors or moving objects to cut […]
Journey to the Shore (2015) trades in the haunted house for a ghost story (Review)
Horror has many go to Monsters; one will have its turn in the limelight before passing it on to the next. The subtleties of titles like the Uninvited or the Haunting have subsided only to be replaced by the cacophony of Amityville Horror or Insidious. However, take Japan or many […]
Outlaw Gangster VIP (1968/9) Making a star of Tetsuya Watari (Review)
The term ‘Studio film’ within the contemporary vernacular is used as a derogatory statement; a catch-all to encompass a focus on making money over quality cinema. While that is certainly also true in Japan, there are also a selection of studios that have gone down in legend – Toho, and […]
Beat Girl (1959) British B-Movie that found a 2nd life in 60s America (Review)
At the start of Ben Wilson’s 2007 history book Decency and Disorder, there are excerpts from letters written by French citizens who visited Britain and were horrified by the rudeness, salaciousness and drunkenness of life over here. That was in the early nineteenth century. One strict course of Victorian values later, […]
Yakuza Apocalypse (2015) The Best Punk Rock Kaiju Movie (Review)
Between 1998 & 2001, Takashi Miike’s prolific nature gained him worldwide notoriety with his V-cinema run. Audition, Ichi the Killer, Dead or Alive, and the Happiness of the Katakuri’s earned him legions of fans worldwide. Even if he isn’t quite as productive as he used to be, he still manages […]