There’s an extra on Criterion UK’s Blu-Ray of Ann Hui’s 1982 film Boat People that’s so good, I’d like to beg your indulgence to deal with it before we get to the main feature. Keep Rolling is a two-hour documentary about Hui’s life and career by Man Lim-Chung. Made in […]
Reviews
Mandrake (2022) Unbalanced yet promising Irish Folk Horror (Glasgow Fright Fest Review)
Horror is a genre with many conventions, and adherence or non-adherence to these conventions are what can make or break a horror film. Slow and suggestive can be more effective than fast and furious; commitment to a straightforward premise may work better than a set of convoluted and unnecessary elements. […]
Europa (2022): gripping outsider’s view of Fortress Europe (Review)
A tough, stripped-back refugee story, it’s tempting to say that Europa (released in cinemas and on-demand by Bulldog Distribution) is a timely release. Except that would imply it wouldn’t have been timely if it was released, say, three months ago. The Ukrainian crisis is the one that’s currently in the […]
Mad Dog Morgan (1976) A nonchalantly average & confused Australian Western (Review)
For a brief period of time, it seemed as if Dennis Hopper was going to be one of the brightest stars of Hollywood. After appearing in a string of mostly low budget films in the 60s (The Trip, Night Tide, Cool Hand Luke etc) his popularity culminated in Easy Rider, […]
Midnight (2021) Who said the wheel needed reinventing? (Review)
Between Gangnam Style, BTS, Parasite, and Squid Game, we have some monumentally successful Korean exports, each one putting the small peninsula on the cultural map to an entirely different audience than the last. Squid Game is especially relevant to Montage Pictures’ release of Midnight – the casting of Wi Ha-jun […]
Classic Film Kid – Down by Law (1986)
Hi guys, it’s the Classic Film Kid back again! Today we’ll be covering a recent re-release from Criterion, that of the 1986 Jim Jarmusch film Down By Law, starring Tom Waits as Zack and John Lurie as Jack, two men who are thrown in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, […]
A Banquet (2021) Domestic Body Horror and Expert Sound Design (Cinema/VOD Review)
When teenager, Betsey (Jessica Alexandra), experiences strange phenomena at a party on the night of a blood moon, her widowed mother (played by Sienna Guillroy), must come to terms with her own history of trauma and decide where her boundaries of beliefs lie in order to help her daughter. It […]
The Incarnation (2022) More Interiors, Less Demonology (VOD Review)
The Incarnation is the directorial debut by Isaac Walsh, starring Taye Diggs (Empire, Chicago) and Jessica Uberuaga (Take Back, Vigilante Diaries) as a married couple desperately seeking success and new beginnings in Los Angeles. With a business venture rapidly going south, the couple moves into a lush property that seems […]
Bartleby (1970): literature’s greatest enigma gets a fine, clever modernisation (Review)
Herman Melville is most famous for writing one of the American novel’s greatest epics in Moby-Dick, but his second most fascinating work couldn’t be more different in terms of scale. A modest, compact short story about a Wall Street clerk who sends his office into turmoil by politely refusing all […]
Voices (1973) Proto The Others, Pre-Leading Female Characters in Horror (Review)
This spooky seventies throwback thriller treads a familiar path of horror tropes, acting as a precursor to some of today’s horror hits. Exiled to obscurity for the last fifty years, will this fresh restoration give Voices a new lease of life, or are they best left unheard? Married (both in […]