To say that this film arrives with a weight of expectation on its shoulders is putting it mildly. For starters, The Shape of Water is the latest film from Guillermo del Toro, widely regarded one of the greatest, most singular cinematic visionaries of our time, not to mention one of my own personal favourite filmmakers […]
A lot of brilliant animators and creators have emerged from the Studio Ghibli workshop, but very few have attempted to capture the magic of Ghibli or make it their own as much as producer Yoshiaki Nishimura. Founder of Studio Ponoc, a contemporary to Studio Ghibli, Nishimura took several members from the Ghibli arthouse and launched […]
How short can you – legitimately – make a cinematic scare? There are people who would say that a second is enough, but these people are probably discussing jump-cuts. Jump-cuts aren’t scary; jump-cuts are the equivalent of someone screaming BOO! into your ear to trigger a reflex reaction. Most people need – and expect – […]
Anthony Bourdain is the coolest guy on the planet. He travels, he eats, and he tells Andrew Zimmern to shut up. He looks like what a good brandy tastes like. He’s what I imagine that bad-ass guy from the neighborhood grew up to be instead of peaking in high school and having a kid way […]
I try to make it a point never to openly roast films just for the fun of it; whatever I say about a project, I try to ask myself whether I’d be happy to say it in front of the filmmaker themselves, and I try really hard to remember that real people out there might […]
The last time I saw Danielle Harris run around a hospital looking anxious for 90-odd minutes, it was in 2014’s See No Evil 2, an utterly bland and formulaic slasher sequel. However, while new release Inoperable offers up the same leading lady and a similar hospital setting, story-wise it’s a somewhat different kettle of fish. […]
The ‘mockumentary’ format has been used to interesting effect over the years; note that I said ‘mockumentary’ rather than ‘found footage’, a sub-genre which usually conjures more questions than it can ever answer. There are some important distinctions between the two. Strawberry Flavored Plastic dodges the most typical question asked during found footage, which is […]
There don’t seem to be a huge number of horror films produced in Vietnam, but one of the most memorable of recent years was Tran Ham’s 2014 possession film Hollow. The similarly supernatural The Housemaid now arrives in the UK on Blu-ray after festival screenings last year, and this is a classy, if flawed, haunted […]
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a sucker for a good Schwarzenegger film. I’ve seen the gamut of his notable works, from the barely-able-to-speak-English Conan the Barbarian, to three-tittied-woman vehicle Total Recall, to his oft overlooked, underappreciated comedy career: Kindergarten Cop, Junior, and Twins (the latter two also starring my favorite, Danny Devito). That […]
Tokyo Ghoul is a film based on a very popular anime and manga, and though I have since started on the anime, when I saw the film I knew very little about the series other than the brief synopsis. Bear that in mind then, when I say I enjoyed the film a great deal – […]
John Hawkes is a pretty fascinating figure in film. For many years, he was most likely to be known for his brief appearance as the liquor store guy in the first scene of From Dusk Till Dawn; or, if you’re a real Robert Rodriguez completist, for his scene-stealing supporting turn in Roadracers. However, more recent […]