Film
Fantasia Festival 2019 Review: The Fable
Japan is unique in the way that manga is integrated and enshrined in its culture. Whilst comics fill the shelves of stores, anime floods onto TV screens. Children are brought up on both and this fascination carries on into adulthood. Japanese cinema mirrors this love affair. However, popularity and quality do not regularly go hand …
Blu-ray Review: Kiss Me Deadly
It would be a severe understatement to say that Robert Aldrich was a bit of a maverick. As well as making some extraordinary cinema the American director was entirely skilled at getting on the wrong side of studios. He was a prolific risk taker and didn’t care who he pissed-off in the process. Aldrich was …
Blu-ray Review: Domino
During the second half of the twentieth century, there were very few American film makers who could hold a torch to Brian De Palma. With the likes of Carrie, Scarface, Carlito’s Way, Blow Out, The Untouchables and Body Double he produced a mixture of muscular box office smashes and stylistic cult favourites. Over the last …
Fantasia Festival 2019 Review – Odd Family: Zombie on Sale
Over the past couple of decades, the idea of zombies or re-animated creatures has proliferated in popular culture across the globe. This has resulted in an eclectic mix of TV, film and comics which have approached the concept from just about every angle imaginable. Nowhere has the sub-genre been embraced so warmly as it has …
Film Review: Framing John DeLorean
If you’re like me, a child who grew up in the ‘80s, the DeLorean was an iconic car. This is almost entirely down to the role it played alongside Doc Brown and Marty McFly in the Back to the Future films. For an older generation, John DeLorean was synonymous with entrepreneurship, high capitalism and scandal. …
Blu-ray Review: Crime and Punishment
Some actors have a distinctive screen presence. The ability to send a chill down your spine with just a look or a few carefully chosen words. There were none better at the art of menace than Peter Lorre. The Hungarian-born actor, who later relocated to Hollywood, made his name in German cinema; most notably in …
Fantasia Festival 2019 Review: Harpoon
Not all films set on a vessel are tales of endurance, loss and triumph or involve a battle of wits with a nefarious sea creature. Whilst pitching ‘man’ against the sea, or its denizens, can be exciting and tense, there’s nothing quite like two or three humans going head to head in the middle of …
Fantasia Festival 2019 Review: Kingdom
There’s nothing in the West quite like Asian historical action epics. That sense of grandeur which mixes fact and fiction to produce a glossy spectacle on a huge scale. Akira Kurosawa set the bar with his colourful masterpiece Ran. Today, it’s a mainstay of cinema across the continent. This has been made possible by the …
Fantasia Festival 2019 Review: Hard-Core
With a myriad of streaming services at our deposal, a great many online resources and active film communities, it has become increasingly simple to watch cinema from all around the world. Whilst you can see the latest Asian blockbuster in many cinemas, buy direct from Asia and watch online, Japanese independent cinema has remained relatively …