It’s interesting how accounts of the later years of Hammer Films can vary according to the tastes of the writer. Some will sigh in resignation at how the once great company lost its way as the times changed; others, such as myself whose early horror education largely consisted of films from that era, look back […]
To present yet further evidence why reviewing new horror movies is frequently a lot less fun than you’d hope: it’s hard to keep track of the number of small scale domestic productions ostensibly carrying on the British tradition of homely Gothic horror, and every time we go in hoping they’ll do justice to the legacy […]
Honestly, I’m the sort of reviewer who thinks that the vast majority of slashers (and many gialli) are better enjoyed as still images than films – being largely an array of stylish, bloody set pieces only loosely linked by some sort of plot – so watching Sergio Martino’s crossover film Torso was an opportunity for […]
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 […]
Bob’s Burgers is the quintessential struggling family show. You got a mom, a dad, and 2.5 kids working together to keep their struggling burger joint afloat amidst money woes and wacky happenings. Each character is a caricature of various family member archetypes almost anyone might have in their household, from the boy-crazy teeny bopper to […]
1970s cinema has many noteworthy qualities, but amongst these, the decade is certainly remarkable for its brief, but intriguing phase of imagining animals ‘going rogue’ and attacking humans; some of the resulting films were breakthrough hits, such as Jaws (1975), whereas some, such as Day of the Animals (1977) would be long-lost to obscurity if […]
It seems that films in which women are sequestered in the name of romance yet wind up trapped and fighting for their lives are like buses; you wait for ages, then two show up at once. Okay, technically Berlin Syndrome arrived a fair bit sooner than Gerald’s Game, as it was released to limited cinemas […]
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 […]
Reader advisory: this review contains spoilers. If in doubt, do not read beyond the warning midway. The Red Turtle is a milestone in the history of Studio Ghibli, Japan’s most famous animation studio, in that it marks their first international co-production. Helming The Red Turtle is Dutch director Michael Dudok de Wit, a name I […]
When most people think of Studio Ghibli, they think either magical fantasy, high flying machines, or both. Almost all of the studio’s work (excluding one or two films) has some sort of larger-than-life element to it, be it flying witches or the newest airplane signalling the beginning of the Great War. Only Yesterday, Ghibli’s 1991 […]