I’m not generally comfortable making big sweeping statements about newly released movies. You never know for sure what a film’s legacy is going to be, and whether or not it will really be remembered as time passes. However, in the case of Blade Runner 2049, I feel surprisingly confident in declaring that, in years to […]
The words ‘from the writer of Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas’ conjure certain mental images; you’re left picturing something that resembles… well… a Tim Burton film. However, Cold Moon – an adaptation of the late Michael McDowell’s 1980 novel Cold Moon over Babylon – is an altogether different kettle of fish, brought to life […]
For anyone who keeps up with the contemporary film scene, there’s really no getting around the somewhat eerie prescience of Gerald’s Game landing on screens at this moment. It’s not just that it’s the latest high profile Stephen King adaptation during something of a renaissance for the famed author’s works on screen, landing in the […]
I can’t speak for all horror movie reviewers when I say this, but personally I tend to take very little pleasure from seeing my initial preconceptions proved 100% correct. As soon as we first got word of The Sound, everything from the title to the premise to the blank, lifeless expressions on the faces of […]
Ryûhei Kitamura has had a pretty interesting and varied career. After directing his first films more than 20 years ago, the Japanese filmmaker really broke through with 2000’s action horror crossover Versus. A few years and a few movies later (2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars among them), he headed stateside. Alas, despite the kinetic energy and […]
If you’ll pardon me starting off in didactic mode, there is a clear distinction between a film review and film analysis. A review, as I understand it (and I should bloody well hope I do, given I’ve written hundreds of the things over the past eight years or so), should give a reasonably succinct overview […]
Few modern directors have such a distinctive, visceral style as Adam Mason, and it’s fair to say that I’ve taken a keen interest in his career so far: over the years I’ve reviewed his feature films Blood River, Pig, Luster, Junkie, and Hangman, and also interviewed Adam (together with collaborator Simon Boyes). I’ve always felt excited and challenged […]
Few writers have had their work adapted for the screen half so much as Stephen King, nor with such variable results, but then this is exactly to be expected when the man himself’s work has varied so wildly over the years. When it comes to the huge tomes from his early days, such as The […]
It’s no secret that I’m a pretty big into anime and manga. I mean, not like ‘seen every episode of Dragon Ball Z’ big, but I know my way around the fandom. That being said, when I heard that my local theater was playing Studio Ghibli’s classic Laputa Castle in the Sky for a one-night […]
The way that I first found out about its existence no doubt did a great disservice to A Ghost Story. Remember that Guardian newspaper article from July, which argued for something called ‘post-horror’? Post-horror is, of course, simply the latest in a long line of terms invented by people who can’t quite accept that they […]
For those of us who are constantly on the lookout for movies which offer something we haven’t seen before, a Hungarian hitman thriller in which the central protagonists are disabled is most definitely a novel proposition. Writer-director Attila Till’s Kills on Wheels (AKA Tiszta Szívvel) offers up just this, and – as was perhaps inevitable – […]
