Jackie Chan, as anyone can tell you, pioneered the martial arts action comedy, punctuating awe-inspiring displays of physical daring and expertise with immaculate comic timing and irreverent sensibilities which have resonated with audiences worldwide for decades. From the late 1970s and well into the 80s, Jackie pumped out hit after hit in this format, several […]
Sequels and remakes have been a thing forever, but it’s only comparatively recently that the term ‘reboot’ was added to the cinematic vernacular. Admittedly, the line between this new-ish descriptor and the aforementioned established film categories is often hazy, but it would seem to effectively mean either taking the story and/or characters in question back […]
The gradual decline of the found footage horror movie is not entirely down to oversaturation. There are larger cultural reasons why the format doesn’t totally work anymore, the principle issue being that it’s just not as accurate reflection of our current video culture as it once was. The days of average joes lugging around camcorders, […]
You have to hand it to director and writer Fred Dekker. Not only has he made some of the most straightforwardly entertaining films of the past forty years or so, but those films are – for many people – forever wedded to the 1980s, so forming part of people’s nostalgia for a decade when many […]
How many of us really felt we needed another Predator movie? It’s been 31 years since Arnold Schwarzenegger and co first battled that ugly motherfucker in the South American jungle, and while the 1990 sequel has its share of devotees, I daresay most would agree John McTiernan’s original has never been topped. For myself, my […]
The Western, pioneered by the likes of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, is a format which has spawned cinema around the world, with recognisably Western-style filmmaking appearing everywhere, even in the likes of the Convict Scorpion films in Japan during the 70s. However, I think it’s probably fair to say that South Africa isn’t greatly […]
Coralie Fargeat’s aptly-titled rape-revenge film caused quite the stir on the rounds of genre festivals last year, and has also had the honour of its own UK tour thanks to Birds Eye View’s Reclaim the Frame series. Revenge is a rape-revenge film made by a woman, which I suppose might, for some, make it a […]
Talk about a movie in which a car breaks down during a storm forcing its passengers to seek refuge in a spooky old house nearby, only to find themselves the guests of a deranged transvestite who intends to use them for nefarious means, and odds are most people will think you’re referring to The Rocky […]
Anyone who’s paid even fleeting attention to the face of horror this past decade, particularly in the low-to-no budget direct to DVD indie realm, will be well aware that found footage has been painful in its ubiquity, and for the most part even more painful in its predictability and ineptitude. Even at the bigger budget, […]
Loss tends to leave us with a significant hole to fill in our lives, and, if we’re not careful, it may well leave us open to manipulation. This is the crux of new US indie Dead Love (originally entitled A Song For The Living), which centres on Grayson Low as Brandon, a young musician and […]
James Bickert may well be the single best filmmaker in the contemporary US microbudget indie exploitation scene. The writer, director, producer and editor certainly isn’t the most prolific in his field, having made three films in the past decade (on top of his four earlier credits from the late 1990s, none of which I’ve seen), […]