The first thing to note about Hou Hsaio-hsien’s dreamlike and vague period drama, Flowers of Shanghai, is just how unhurried it is with plot and pacing. If you are not a fan of slow cinema or don’t like films that are dense and are stray observations on character and mood, […]
Reviews
One-Armed Boxer (1972) The Good, The Shaft and the Okinawan Karate Vampire (Review)
Perhaps I should’ve seen this coming. When I watched the cult favourite, Master of the Flying Guillotine, the arrival of the bad guy was scored by krautrock legends Neu!. While not strictly legal, this use of music made the threat to the heroes feel more dangerous and substantial than any […]
But I’m a Cheerleader! (1999): the best John Waters film Waters never made (Review)
It’s all very well if you’re a Jack or a Sarah, apparently, but us Grahams have few iconic movie characters who share our name. Even more reason, then, to cheer for Lionsgate’s new Blu-Ray of Jamie Babbit’s cult comedy But I’m a Cheerleader, which gives us a Graham for the […]
Encounters of a Spooky Kind (1980) Funny and Spooky, the perfect antidote to a bad day (Review)
Sammo is much more than Jackie Chan’s friend and co-collaborator and the butt of so many fat jokes in the 80s and 90s, he also happens to be one of the best action directors Hong Kong cinema ever produced. At his peak he was just as good behind the camera […]
The Night of the Hunter (1955): The First Shall Be Last and the Last Shall Be First (Review)
By the late 1940s, it seemed that Charles Laughton, that great Scarborough-born star of the silver screen, was losing interest in acting. Believing his performances in films like The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Rembrandt (1936) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) were […]
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932): a devil of a time with a future star (Review)
It was a truism, once, that Hollywood portrayals of alcoholism were glib, comic affairs until Billy Wilder made The Long Weekend. While nothing can take away the quality of Wilder’s film, one of the pleasures of living at this particular moment in history – yes, there are some – is […]
Before Tonight is Over (1965) “Someone Will Die” (Review)
Released to Second Run Blu-ray this week, Peter Solan’s 1965 film Before Tonight is Over is a real hidden gem waiting to be discovered by all like-minded fans of the Czech New Wave movement. It tells the story of an evening in a nightclub in the Slovak mountain resort of […]
Lake Mungo (2008) The Most Hauntingly Real Horror One Of A Kind (Review)
In the incredibly generous extras section of Second Sight’s new release – Lake Mungo, are appreciation videos from Rob Savage (Host) and Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead (indie mainstays). Both open with the same throughline, they were looking for genuinely scary movies beyond the same cliched selection of classics and […]
Over the Edge (1979) Satire, Rawness & an Amazing Rock Soundtrack (Review)
Teenagers have been one of cinema’s great projects: from the 1960s to the 90s, entire waves and genres rose and fell in the attempt to get their bums on seats. From the teen sex comedy, beach and party movies, and the pink eiga, sadly, they are now an audience that […]
The Silence Before Bach (2007) and Mudanza (2008) (Review)
There’s a running bit in Steve Jobs, Danny Boyle’s most irritating film, where the title character repeatedly explains the importance of making phones that are slightly smaller and more functional than other phones by comparing them to major flashpoints in art history – Dylan going electric, say, or the premiere […]