Continuing on our journey From Hollywood to Heaven, we must first take the road through The Burning Hell (1974), with the Reverend Estus Pirkle as our Dante, Ron Ormond our Virgil, and The Neon Demon (2016) director Nicholas Winding Refn still ever-present for some as-of-yet indiscernible reason. The Ormond family’s […]
Reviews
The Hot Spot (1990): more fun than eating cotton candy barefoot (Blu-Ray Review)
The Game Trilogy (1978/9) Classic Japanese Carnage with a Huge Slice of Cool (Review)
Standing at 6 feet tall and having an effortlessly cool demeanour, Yusaku Matsuda stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries in every sense of the term. His baby face masked by the always present sunglasses and a slender physique gave manga and anime artists their template for the next two […]
From Hollywood To Heaven (III)(1971-77) (Review) Part One – All Ormonds Go to Heaven
Can a born-again Christian really become an exploitation movie superstar? Picture, if you will, one Ron Ormond, a Louisiana-born screenwriter, author, magician, showman and, most relevant to the subject of this review, director of motion pictures. If you’ve heard that name before, it may be because Ormond was a rather […]
Inland Empire (2006): How much more Lynch can this be? None, none more Lynch (Review)
Re-released in a new Criterion led restoration, Inland Empire is David Lynch’s most recent feature length film (if you’re not counting Twin Peaks: The Return, which is more contentious than you’d think), and generally has the reputation of being a collection of ideas and experimentations with filming in digital, lacking […]
Fists in the Pocket (1965): A Disquieting, Macabre Satire of Family Values and Catholic Morality (Review)
Released to Criterion this week is a film that caused shock and outrage in its native Italy upon its release in 1965. Marco Bellocchio’s feature debut Fists in the Pocket is a disquieting, macabre and unique work that seemed designed to ruffle a few feathers, not only in its desire […]
Mexico Macabre: Four Sinister Tales from the Alameda Films Vault (1959-62) An unmissable collection of Horror Treats (Review)
In a world premiere on Blu-ray, Indicator presents a selection of four films from Mexican film company Alameda films from their early years, in this case, between 1959 to 1963. The quartet form an array of tales that showcase a variety of horror subgenres: a Poe-esque cautionary tale, an occult […]
Twilight (1990): an irresistible challenge that upends the detective genre (Review)
There are many mysteries to unpick in the new Second Run release, but the one that had me the most perplexed is this: what were people watching before this restoration? Because, as Stanley Schtinter’s booklet and several of the interviews on this disc attest, György Fehér’s debut theatrical release was […]
The Lighthouse (2019): a 4K illumination for a modern cult classic (Review)
Aptly for a director so invested in orally told tales – superstitions, fisherman’s stories, Icelandic sagas – Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse is already accruing its own legend. It’s one of the few modern films to have a legendarily tough shoot, all of which is unpacked in the three-part making-of documentary […]
Medusa Deluxe (2022) Social Realist Murder Mystery with all the Pizzazz (Review)
Medusa Deluxe (2022) is a murder mystery thriller set in the backbiting world of competitive hairdressing. Big hair and even bigger egos collide in a tense and taut mystery that keeps the viewer guessing until the very end. Medusa Deluxe is like Showgirls with more hair extensions. Fabulous, extravagant and […]