In a world where we so often feel like every story has been told, perhaps a movie about a guy who builds a cardboard labyrinth in his apartment is just what we need to make us believe in original ideas again. A bizarre low budget comedy from first time director and co-writer Bill Watterson, Dave […]
A confession: I am not familiar with the work of director Gaspar Noé, despite his presence as a notorious, divisive figure in the cult cinema scene. The verdict on 2002’s Irreversible was so split amongst people whose opinions I trust that I’ve still never sought the film out, and as such I’ve never caught up […]
I have to say right away, it takes some balls to slap a title like that on a low-budget indie horror from a largely unknown cast and crew. It’s almost as if writer-director Justin McConnell and company are inviting the likes of me to snidely declare that it’s far from a life-changing experience. By extension, […]
The first clue that all is not well with friends (and fast food connoisseurs) Tan and Javid is that, as they leave a Berlin kebab restaurant which has apparently not passed muster, they have to step over a lot of dead bodies as they go. In a neat move, then, Snowflake establishes key elements in […]
If you’ve seen your share of historical martial arts movies, chances are you’ve heard the name Wong Fei-Hung. A real life pioneer of Kung Fu and Chinese medicine and all-around folk hero, he’s been heavily mythologised in Hong Kong action cinema, notable films including Drunken Master and Iron Monkey. However, where both those films followed […]
This feature discusses the series in full and as such may contain spoilers. Mike Flanagan gets it. He gets the power of horror, and he doesn’t seek to delegitimise that power by needlessly talking it up or talking it down; with his work adapting Stephen King, his films such as Oculus and (the rarely-mentioned, but […]
I start this review with something of a confession: it has only dawned on me in the past few years, really, that my liking for Dario Argento’s work is based on a very small number of his films. And it’s awful – as well as terribly unpopular these days, given the vicissitudes of the likes […]
It must be incredibly hard to carve a new niche for yourself as an actor when you’re largely known for one role, but – as Game of Thrones is about to enter its final ever season – this is something the cast are going to have to negotiate; that is, unless they’re doing it already. […]
You have to hand it to Keanu Reeves. He may have been a huge star ever since breaking through as one half of the affable, dim-witted metalhead duo in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure a full three decades ago, yet for the longest time he was widely deemed impossible to take seriously as a dramatic […]
The festive season has always been a popular setting for horror movies. This may in part be a natural evolution of the old tradition for setting ghost stories on Christmas Eve, but I daresay it’s more of a Grinch-like reaction against the crassness, commercialism and artifice of the event in modern culture; how, as much […]
I’ve really only encountered director Jim Van Bebber thus far through his art-house spin on The Manson Family (1997), a film which I confess didn’t quite gel with me – but I’ve never, until now, seen his first feature Deadbeat at Dawn, made around a decade earlier but filmed over four years altogether. Deadbeat at […]