To paraphrase Bob Marley: “who shot the western?” There are a number of smoking guns when it comes to this particular murder. Was it Michael Cimino, the megalomaniacal visionary behind Heaven’s Gate, an epic so wildly out of control that it killed an entire film studio? Was it the audience […]
Reviews
Poolman (2023): it’s not Chris Pine’s The Big Lebowski, but it’s not bad either (Review)
The first thing we hear is the distant barking of dogs, and the wolves have certainly been out for Chris Pine’s directorial debut since it premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Before the event began, the idea of Best Chris giving his variant on the Dude archetype in […]
The Miracle Fighters (1982) Lost Under the Weight of Yuen Woo Ping’s Many Classics (Review)
Yuen Woo Ping. One of the few names that has transcended the films he worked on and become synonymous with top quality fights. Thanks to his work on films such as The Matrix, Kill Bill and arguably the one that put his name on the global cinematic map, Crouching Tiger, […]
Bandits of Orgosolo + The Lost World (1961) Radiance’s Best Release Yet (Review)
I reliably watch around 300 films every year. I am set to fall a long way short of that in 2024. Over the last two months, I’ve found it hard to concentrate as I focused my energy on preparing to move out of my damp flat while chronically ill, opting […]
Gonjiam Haunted Asylum (2018) Old School Haunted House Terror from Korea (Review)
Korean Horror is a little known entity outside of the TV format, and even though, like Japan, it has a reductive abbreviation to pack all of its horrors together in a digestible sub-genre (K-Horror), there’s no poster child, no Ringu, Cure, or Dark Water level threat. You could cite the […]
The Sacrament (2013) Ti West’s true-story Exploitation goes South (Review)
No one does genre pastiche quite like Ti West who, after working his way up from no-budget shorts to no-budget features, finally took off in 2009 with the one-two hits of a ready-made cult classic (House of the Devil), and a straight-to-video sequel (Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever). There’s an […]
The G (2023): lean, realist revenge thriller puts a welcome spotlight on Dale Dickey (Review)
The concept of “geriaction” has been around for a fair while, although not long enough for people to give it a better name. Younger audiences born around the time Liam Neeson made his first Taken movie in 2008 might be forgiven for assuming older leads are just a thing action […]
The Exorcism (2024) Russell Crowe Goes Method in Meta-horror Mix-up (Review)
Let’s get the obvious out the way first; no, The Exorcism has no connection to The Pope’s Exorcist, the uniformly-titled occult horror released only last year where Russell Crowe played an exorcist and also shares a near identical poster. In fact, this uncanny case of cinematic deja-vu is one of […]
The Crazy Family (1984) Energetic Bad-Taste Comedy Breaks down the Traditional Japanese Family Drama (Review)
The first thing you wonder when you sit down to watch a film called The Crazy Family – now released on Blu-Ray by Third Window – is how crazy are they going to be, exactly? “Crazy”, as a descriptor, can be pretty relatable: we were definitely meant to feel for Beyonce when […]
Sasquatch Sunset (2024) – An absurdist look at the fragility of life (Review)
After directing 3 episodes of the one-of-a-kind TV series The Curse, Nathan and David Zellner craft another experimental work. This time, Sasquatch Sunset unfolds in the misty forests of Northern California following a family of four Sasquatches who may be the last of their kind. Set over the course of […]