Blu-Ray Review: Hammer Horror Collection One
For two decades, beginning in the mid-1950s, ‘Hammer Horror’ was the epitome of genre cinema in the UK. With a cast of familiar faces (including Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee) Hammer Film Productions churned out an almost constant stream of terror, blood and monsters. There most popular titles revolved around Dracula, Frankenstein and …
Celluloid Screams Review: Mayhem
If you’ve ever had the dubious privilege of working in an office, you’ll be aware of all the niggles, pent-up frustrations and internal anger synonymous with that kind of environment. The pettiness. The back-stabbing. The nepotism. The higher the stakes, the higher the tensions. When salaries start hitting 6 or 7 figures, the rivalry, underhand …
Blu-Ray Review – Channel Zero: Candle Cove
As regular as clockwork, every few years there’s an outcry about the negative effect television and/or films is having on children. If it’s not that, then it’s video games. It seems that just about any problem in modern society which afflicts the young can be blamed on one medium or another. It never every seems …
Incoming: Call Me By Your Name
A sudden and powerful romance blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents’ cliff-side mansion. Call Me By Your Name is in cinemas from Friday.
Celluloid Screams Review: The Endless
As a genre film fan, one of the biggest frustrations is the limited access we have to the full array of films being (often) lovingly created. Cinemas are often full of forgettable and confusing franchise sequels which tend to merge into one big lump of nothing. Occasionally, the likes of The Babadook, The Witch, Get …
Blu-Ray Review: Torture Garden
Two of the greatest authors of terror, H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, revelled in the medium of short stories. The format lends itself to the horror genre, allowing directors to investigate a full gamut of fear. Anthology films are inherently difficult as, unlike collections of short stories, by their very nature there’s a much …
Incoming: Phantom Thread
A new Paul Thomas Anderson film is always an event and the first trailer for Phantom Thread is finally here: Set in the glamour of 1950’s post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the center of British fashion, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutantes and …
Blu-Ray Review: The Villainess
The lone female assassin motif has produced some memorable cinematic performances. Whether it’s Uma Thurman in Kill Bill 1&2, Anne Parillaud as Nikita or Meiko Kaji in Lady Snowblood, there’s a powerful celluloid attraction to the pull of deadly sensuality. Indeed, this has been particularly the case in Asia, where Shu Qi in The Assassin, …
Celluloid Screams Review: Tag
There are few, if any, Asian film directors with a vision as distinctive and unique as Sion Sono. Unfortunately, this leads to a varying quality of output. For every Love Exposure, Cold Fish, Suicide Club or Noriko’s Dinner Table there’s a Tokyo Tribe, Shinjuku Swan or Bad Film. His latest film to hit the UK …
Incoming – Thor: Ragnarok
Thor is imprisoned on the other side of the universe without his mighty hammer and finds himself in a race against time to get back to Asgard to stop Ragnarok—the destruction of his homeworld and the end of Asgardian civilization—at the hands of an all-powerful new threat, the ruthless Hela. But first he must survive …