The Tiger (2015)

Sometimes a film self-consciously goes for the ‘epic’ tag, and it’s clear from the very outset that this is the case with Park Hoon-jung’s 2015 movie The Tiger. With its sweeping Korean vistas, Sturm und Drang musical score and lone figure set against an unforgiving world it clearly fits the bill, and actually that’s just […]

The Punisher (2017)

Much as they have at the multiplexes, Marvel have carved out a real niche for themselves with their Netflix shows. Whilst their big screen ventures remain resolutely big budget, globe/universe-hopping fantastical adventures bringing the comic label’s most grandiose superheroes to life, these small screen offshoots, while ostensibly still set in that same (buzzword alert) cinematic […]

Silly Symphonies #3

Most of us are too young to remember Silly Symphonies in its prime. Hell, most of our parents are too young remember it; but, much like Universal Monsters and WW2, we still seem to be talking about it. Silly Symphonies was a series of 75 Disney cartoons released between 1929 and 1939 focusing on combining […]

Black Christmas (1974)

For a filmmaker largely forgotten by the wider audience, the late Bob Clark’s directorial career had a surprising impact. With 1981’s Porky’s, he blew the doors wide open on the teen sex comedy boom; and I understand 1983’s A Christmas Story is something of a perennial festive favourite in the US (I myself have never […]

Fear in the Night (1972)

Hammer is best-known for its Kensington Gore and its literary monsters, usually shot against a 60s-coloured 19th Century which is a distinctive aesthetic all of its own; the studio deviated from this formula quite considerably at times, though, in a range of films which seem to have divided critics ever since. Fear in the Night […]

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

I will confess that I have had no prior experience of director Yorgos Lanthimos’s work, but based on his most recent film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, I’d imagine that a little goes a long way. That isn’t to say that I wasn’t completely drawn in to this twisted story of unhappy families, but […]

Unchained Melody: The Films of Meiko Kaji

Meiko Kaji is, from a Western perspective, one of the most unmistakable and recognisable Japanese actresses of all time, but this comes with a significant proviso. Most of us know just a tiny fraction of the films she has ever made; only a handful of these nearly one hundred films have really made it over […]

Tag (2015)

I have a real love/hate thing going with Japanese director Sion Sono. On one hand, his so-called ‘hate’ trilogy contains, for me, some of the most genius, subversive films I have ever been immersed in; they’re absolutely jaw-dropping, to the point that I don’t know if I can feasibly revisit Guilty of Romance for fear […]