The 1970s were such a diverse and varied decade for cinema. It would give rise to the summer blockbuster (Star Wars & Jaws), get wracked with paranoia in its conspiracy thrillers (The Parallax View & The Conversation) and no longer see the world through the rose-tinted glasses that had filled […]
Reviews
Mystery Train (1989) A Trip to Memphis, With or Without Rose Tinted Glasses (Review)
Mystery Train was director Jim Jarmusch’s 4th film and his first since his low-budget debut, Permanent Vacation, to be shot in colour. His previous two were strikingly shot in black and white, which suggests that Jarmusch wished to visually capture Memphis in the best way that he could. Despite being […]
The Street Fighter Trilogy (1974) Kicks, Quips and Boatload of Cool (Review)
On July 20th 1973 the world lost one of the most iconic action stars to have ever been. A star that shone so bright that it was bound to burn out rather than fade away. He would be the standard by which the action genre would be judged and would […]
The Curse of Rosalie (2022) Too Much Movie in this Movie (Review)
What’s in the title of a movie? If the title is The Harbinger, then plenty. One of the more acclaimed indie titles of 2022 was Andy Mitton‘s Harbinger, a terror inspired by the anonymity of COVID-death figures. A title Mitton’s film shared with Will Klipstine’s native-American-infused fantasy/ religious horror. The […]
Rapture (A.K.A. Arebatto) Thought-provoking Spanish Cult Film Finally hits UK Shores(1979)(Review)
“If what I think is going to happen does happen, no-one will send you the last film. You’ll have to come and get it.” Iván Zulueta’s Arebatto is as self-aware as it is hypnotising. I love the urgency of a film that commits to the container of a delivered film. […]
Naked Lunch (1991): a special edition big enough to feed anyone’s addiction (Review)
One of the great things about Arrow Video’s Blu-Ray special edition of David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch is that the package does the same thing as the film: it uses cutting-edge technology to immerse you in the stranger corners of a now-lost era. In Cronenberg’s case, that meant using Chris Walas’s […]
Illusion (Review) (Kinoteka Festival 2023)
The spectre of a missing person creates a different type of distress than death, because not knowing is a unique form of anguish. While there may be grief over the strong possibility that the missing person is dead, this grief is hard to process when the lack of certainty adds […]
Kids Vs Aliens (2022)The perfect gateway horror fodder for 13-year-olds (Review)
A group of young boys let loose with a video camera, a forbidden house party whilst the parents are away, the arrival of malicious extraterrestrial kidnappers… if the premise of cult genre filmmaker Jason Eisener’s latest, Kids vs. Aliens, sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because he was also the […]
Wanda (1970) A Glimpse of the Real New Hollywood? (Review)
April 17th sees the release to the Criterion Collection of Wanda, the first and only feature film from Barbara Loden, actor and wife of Elia Kazan. A landmark in US cinema’s independent movement, Wanda is set in the unglamorous sooty surroundings of eastern Pennsylvania’s industrial heartlands and features a central […]
Evil Dead Rise (2023): Horror franchise reaches new heights
Evil Dead as a franchise has a clear trajectory though it is uncertain whether it has been a wholly positive one. Unlike Scream which started as blockbuster mainstream horror and has maintained that status with each instalment, Evil Dead began with a group of friends making a cheap horror film […]