I can’t help but see this as a genre-specific deep-dive companion piece to Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film project. It’s clearly made by someone with a solid sense of the sociopolitical context of horror (I was going to say ‘horror cinema’, but this covers plenty of made-for-TV productions in its wide remit) and interprets folk horror in particular as an idea that varies depending on its cultural milieu (in Britain, age against youth, urban against rural and so on; but a post-colonial spectre in America and Australia) yet sharing common threads, like the tension between ‘tradition’ and ‘progress’. More…
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Not the most enlightened premise in this day and age. But the pace is near breathless, and the choreography truly exceptional. Like, Rogers-and-Astaire-but-kung-fu good. More…
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That is a sweet watch, in fairness. More…
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After a thrilling start, this one turns into a 90-minute training montage with absolutely wild swings of tone. It doesn’t work so much as I enjoyed it despite its glaring flaws. More…
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Wishful thinking to posit that taking the moral high ground will get any positive material results in the Hobbesian atmosphere of a Shaw Bros martial-arts flick. More…
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Two things: one, I was aware of Super Dave as a bit from late-night talk shows but I did not realise until shockingly recently that he was Albert Brooks’ brother; and two, he’s legitimately funny without the unfortunate compulsion for “dialect comedy”, as its phrased so euphemistically here. More…
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It’s just a sleazy King Kong knock-off. Aside from some nicely crafted model work and city destruction, there’s nothing worth seeing here. More…
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Hate to say I found this one a bit slow-going until the Wooden Men Alley sequence; that’s when the fightin’ starts and never lets up for the entire second half. More…
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I had to read about five Wikipedia articles to get a handle on the story before I could even start with this, despite having watched the original series not so long ago, so yeah, it’s one of those. More…
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I’m convinced I at least half-watched this before but if I have it’s been erased from my memory. Proof enough of the existence of psychic powers, if you ask me. More…
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There’s a glimpse of Steven McDonald in the last half hour that teases a parallel universe where there’s another version of this film but it’s about Redd Kross. More…
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It’s got the same problem as The Happening, and The Village, and most of Shyamalan’s ‘big’ movies in that an attempt at serious human drama clashes with a preposterous premise, and the results are expectedly muddled. I much prefer the fake Wikipedia plot where this turns out to be a sequel to Lady in the Water and shit gets even crazier after the credits roll. More…
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There’s so much to ridicule about this pitiful excuse for a satire, but maybe the most egregious is that no one gets cut off for swearing on TV. More…
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I have zero recollection of watching this in 2011, but my thoughts from that viewing still stand, and in fact I rate it higher now. I miss this kind of fun and adventure that doesn’t sink into cliquish nerdy referencing; the nostalgia is far more broad, and all the better for it. Looks great in 4K, too. More…
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Those rabbits were still alive? They were just like crawling in the ground dazed when your man dropped them there. That will stick with me. More…
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It’s got more politicking than fighting, and I’ve been distracted this week so it took me a few goes to get through. But if you want a masterclass in vengeance-fuelled resilience, the last half hour is for you. More…
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Did… an AI write this movie? More…
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I suppose all these ‘haunting’ movies of the late ’70s were just a way to explain away the cultural disease of patriarchy. More…
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Diving (digitally) into Arrow’s Shawscope box set, and this one is the first in the list. There’s a hint of Iko Uwais in Lo Lieh’s determined martial arts student who finds himself embroiled in a clash between honourable tradition and shady politics. The fight scenes are where it’s really at, though, and it’s no surprise to see why this sparked such a craze in ’70s America. More…
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The pretensions to high drama are laughable but I loved it regardless. More…
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Grumpy old men and a bolshy young wan besieged by a zombie-like drug-addled horde and their uber-villainous kingpin? So much, so Assault on Precinct 13. That Carpenter vibe extends to the soundtrack by Zombi’s Steve Moore, too. Sounds pretty good, right? If only they’d shot it with cameras with better light sensitivity, because I could barely see a fucking thing. More…
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In substance? Brilliant stuff. Mario Van Peebles making a biopic about his revolutionary film-maker dad? Pure poetry. But it’s shot like a Hallmark movie, which is an insult to the subject matter. More…
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This is not a criticism of the film itself. But it’s striking to me, some 20 years after this was produced, that among all the pontification about the controversy surrounding Ken Russell’s provocative work, what goes conspicuously under-examined is the notion of a parade of mostly elderly men excusing the discomfort of women (often “girls” in their parlance) who were exploited — in both the highest and lowest senses of the term — in the name of ‘art’. Our understanding of consent has come along way since the turn of this century, let alone the early 1970s. More…
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Did I see this at an IFI Horrorthon? It seems like something that might’ve happened. Nothing shocking about it, to be honest; it’s merely a succession of talking heads sharing their recollections of making a movie on a shoestring budget in a hot Texas summer. It’s the movie itself that’s truly disturbing. More…
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Imagine seeing Videodrome and being so profoundly disturbed that you have to make your own version of it, to exorcise or overcome its power over you, but the results are ultimately pedestrian because you can’t quite go there, for fear of losing yourself to it. That’s what this feels like. More…
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Watched the original Italian version, which appears to play a bit more fast and loose with the tone but also, at least based on comparison of the first few minutes, retains more of the creative cinematography lost to some brutal editing in the international cut. More…
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Takashi Miike does Nightbreed for kids. It’s half an hour too long, but a fun ride for the most part. More…
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Right, so. I watched this at home. No, you can’t shame me. Some of you people talk about the cinema being so necessary to the experience as if any movie gets more than a few weeks before it has to live or die on its reputation on home video. Anyway, it looks like an eye-wateringly expensive streaming series more than a blockbuster motion picture, its often hauntingly beautiful composition notwithstanding, so no big loss. More…
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It seems David Gordon Green responded to criticisms that his Halloween reboot lacked character development to accompany Michael Myers’ killing spree by going to the other extreme and lining up a succession of perfectly genial if not genuinely sweet townsfolk of all ages to be brutally murdered in the most ghastly, gratuitous and mean-spirited fashion. More…
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Others brighter than me have pointed out that this is more a portrait of the 1960s New York arts scene in toto than one focused specifically on the band, and that makes sense as the narrative rushes to a close once that scene implodes. More…
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The Brain is A Nightmare on Elm Street made in the style of David Cronenberg but with the sensibility of Stuart Gordon, or even Larry Cohen, which will make more sense having watched it. Unfortunately the movie runs out of steam way before the final act; the budgetary limits really show. However the central concept (telepathic, presumably alien brain monster vs strong-willed teen) is a neat one, as derivatively as it’s realised here, and ripe for another attempt if someone wants a go. More…
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There’s a layer of self-important artsiness that keeps this flick from being the stylish but down-and-dirty shoot-’em-up it’s meant to be. More…
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If you’ve snagged the ET kid for your Aussie adventure flick, well, you’ve gotta make him cry! Seriously, though, this has a charming quirkiness that more than compensates for a premise no more grand than a CBBC mystery series from the days before satellite and cable ruined terrestrial children’s TV. And what closes the circle is knowing the girl who plays Jane would sing the theme for Round the Twist which you are already playing in your head right now, aren’t ya? More…
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Weird to make a film about the Seattle scene after the bubble had well and truly burst. More…
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That bit where the cop says Greta has the right to haunt Frances from across the street with a telephoto lens if she wants to? Kayfabe broken, fuck this movie. More…
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There’s a film to be made about dissociative identity disorder, how it affects those who live with it and how it remains a controversial issue within psychiatric circles. This? This is not it. More…
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Rich Hall goes Howard Zinn for an hour and a half, and I’m here for it. More…
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If this were made for YouTube we’d call it a video essay, but it was produced for BBC Four so it gets to be a documentary, I suppose. More…
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Now I’ve got to know the connections between Vince McMahon and Jimmy Galante. More…
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Elite sport is bad for your health. More…
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When Mike Tyson of all people has some of the most insightful comments, you know it’s a messed-up situation. More…
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This almost-documentary follows the exploits of a man who straddles multiple worlds. Michael Majalahti grew up in Canada but lives in Finland, the homeland of his preacher father. He’s got the kind of career kids sometimes imagine for themselves: a rock singer by day and pro wrestler by night (or is that the other way round?). He’s a nifty comic artist in the Jerry Lawler school, too. Oh, and he’s also a sexist jerk with really narrow-minded if not toxic ideas about masculinity. More…
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Wonderful to put faces and voices to sounds I’ve been reading about in The Wire for many years. However, it feels contradictory to complain that Wendy Carlos refused to transcend the musical forms of dead white men by performing Bach on synths, when Delia Derbyshire’s best known for the distinctly melodious theme for Doctor Who and Suzanne Ciani made a living from advertising jingles. If your thesis is “the avant-garde versus mainstream expectations of what music is”, then maybe stick with it? More…
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It’s bleak because each of these horrors has happened somewhere in the world in my lifetime and will probably continue to happen. Because power corrupts. More…
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I’ll be charitable about the “giallo” thing as maybe that reviewer was reaching for “grand guignol”? Anyway, this is basically a mashup of Cronenbergian Henenlotterian body horror and De Palma-esque plot fuckery turned up to 11. More…
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A suicidal artist gets possessed by the spirit of a vengeful mobster. That’s the plot, in a nutshell, but Retribution is a lot more than that. For one thing, it’s got that same New Yawk scuzz that makes Street Trash such a treat (even though it’s set in LA?). More…
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The film-makers dance around the question of whether Rick James became a monstrous asshole because of all the drugs, or whether he was attracted to the drugs because he was a monstrous asshole. But the talent is undeniable, as is the fact that racism made him a one-hit wonder in the general historical record. More…
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I guess one person’s independent, counter-culture spirit is another’s corporate AOR with a side of rampant sexism. Just think that while these goobers were jamming to Jimmy Buffett, somewhere about 20 miles away the bands that would become Black Flag and the Minutemen were woodshedding for a real revolution. More…
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Here’s a neat idea squandered. A lot less forgettable “my past…my destiny” drama clichés and a lot more of that flashy, occasionally inventive action might’ve done the trick. As would’ve cutting about 20 minutes. More…
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Not that it makes up for the superficial, uninspired plot, but the blatant anti-US sentiment — with straight references to Afghanistan — make this one a real “oh daaaaamn” watch in 2021. More…
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