When I first heard that the Soska twins were directing a remake of David Cronenberg’s 1977 movie Rabid, I think, like many people, I wondered what on earth they were going to do with it. Whilst not an obvious choice for a glossy re-imagining, it’s also a film with plenty of potential for a new […]
It seems that gone are the days when social commentary in cinema happened as a matter of chance; more and more, in our hyper-aware times, filmmakers actively tackle hot topics such as attitudes to sexuality, race or class – it’s there from the start, right from the beginning of the writing process. So when I […]
By Matt Harries Despite professing to not be a political film maker, William Friedkin demonstrated his social conscience at the very beginning of his directorial career. The People Vs Paul Crump was Friedkin’s 1962 debut and follows the story of the titular Crump, sentenced to death by electric chair for his part in a bungled […]
Winter in Poland. A woman is taking the train from Warsaw back to her dilapidated home town, a part of the world evidently undergoing a spate of child disappearances, given the newspapers and news bulletins we soon encounter. This is Alicja (Magdalena Cielecka), a journalist, who has chosen to return to her old home in […]
When I read some of the blurb for Imperial Blue and saw that its story revolved around drug use, I expected to get one of two things: either a brutal crime drama, where cartel is pitched against cartel, or else a surreal, even overblown imagining of substance abuse on-screen. In truth, Imperial Blue contains some […]
By Helen Creighton At first glance, Certain Kind of Silence has the whiff of a certain kind of Stepford: vague parallels could be drawn between the classic 70s sci-fi The Stepford Wives and Czech director Michal Hogenauer’s tale of a young au pair slowly but inexorably drawn into an oppressive cult environment against her better […]
Tatsumi is a troubled young man. He doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, and we first meet him at an abortive encounter with a careers guidance officer which sees him, exasperatedly, told to go back to his parents. Yet he doesn’t ask for their advice, either: instead, he withdraws from the […]
Western audiences have had their pick of Japanese crime thrillers in recent years, as more and more films, old and new, have received releases. This means perhaps that a new generation of audiences has become enraptured by the idea of Japan’s seedy underworld, with its molls and its gangsters, its ultraviolence and its gore. That […]
‘This book is just a little collection of memories, a scrapbook, if you will. No book, however comprehensive, could do justice to, or fully encompass, this man’s life. This is a thumbnail sketch of the Anton LaVey I knew.’ (Boyd Rice) I was surprised and interested to find out that a new book on LaVey […]
The dour, yet pacy and surprisingly graphic take on Stephen King’s novel IT was a pleasant surprise when it hit our cinema screens a couple of years ago, and the promise of a second, and closing chapter has been something which fans of the film have kept an eye on ever since. Picking up, as […]
For a brief, shimmering moment, it almost looked as if the oft-maligned SyFy might finally have cast aside its long-held status as the home of subpar genre material, and had finally developed into a platform for genuinely well-made and entertaining films from creators who were really putting forth the requisite effort. The moment I’m talking […]