Hotel Poseidon (2021) begins with an almost-mute man listening to some strangely motivational speech-making from the room next door; hard to imagine why someone would be quite this optimistic, given the dilapidated environs, but then this is a strange film and Hotel Poseidon itself is an odd, decrepit place, the sort of place Possum‘s Philip […]
This kind of crime thriller isn’t standard fare at Warped Perspective, but Baby Money has a great deal to recommend it: it’s well-paced, well-developed and carries enough surprises to maintain interest. Beginning with a young woman, Minny (Danay Garcia) having an ultrasound scan, it’s clear immediately that this is a wanted baby but – Minny […]
By a strange coincidence, I sat down to watch a screening of Agnes (2021) almost exactly fifty years since the release of The Devils (1971), Ken Russell’s incendiary historical horror about possession in a 17th Century convent. Since then, misbehaving nuns have featured in cinema fairly regularly, though often (if not always) appearing in more […]
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that adapting Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) as a drama project would be completely mad idea, and you’d be correct. Step forward a group of bus drivers and amateur dramatics enthusiasts from Dorset, England, who were determined to do just that (and for the record, they considered doing Kill Bill). The documentary […]
In thinking about how to begin this review, it feels impossible not to come at it from a British perspective. In so many ways, Paul Dood’s Deadly Lunch Break is the archetypal British dark comedy – sad, sometimes bitter, bittersweet but very funny. And, as it takes us through all of this, it’s more than […]
There’s been some great cinema coming out of Argentina in recent years, now joined by On The 3rd Day (2021), a clever and carefully-structured horror film which successfully incorporates several horror tropes without settling into a rut. Taking first one route and then another, the film makes you doubt your allegiances and presents several narrative […]
Because the world has altered so rapidly over the past twenty years, with new ways of analysing, modifying and recording human behaviour, it’s already quite usual to see this reflected in cinema. The thing is, it’s more often than not treated as a grave concern, coming to us via technological horrors which plump for a […]
Balancing a dark sense of humour against several other themes and elements of genre, King Car offers an adventurous look at the relationship between man and machine. Sure, we’ve seen sentient vehicles before, but not quite like this. It’s a smart, if zany piece of work, busy, but (just about) giving us something which brings […]
A couple of years ago, my parents came to stay for a few days. One evening we had dinner, and I suggested we watch a film. After a bit of discussion, the choice was Robocop – the 1987 Director’s Cut. So we settled down to watch it. At the end, my father made this comment: […]
The first and most important character in The Green Sea is, fittingly enough, the landscape: this is made clear by the slow deliberation it is given on screen, as opposed to the interior spaces, which are uniformly chaotic and confining – at least, at first. A drama with some unsettling, uncomfortable content, it makes its […]
Motivated by the popularity of 1986’s Strike Commando, the first of a number of films they shot in the Philippines, Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso and producer Franco Gaudenzi sought to emulate its success by making a sequel, Strike Commando 2 (Trappola diabolica), released in 1988. Along with the first film, Strike Commando 2 has been […]