I really like anthology films – particularly when it comes to horror. Anthology films let you take a brief period of time to tell an exciting, concise story that can scare you, excite you, or creep you out. Perhaps this is due to many great horror stories being short stories. One of the masters of the horror story was Edgar Allen Poe. This brings me to Extraordinary Tales, an animated anthology film adaptation 5 of Poe’s short stories. Read more
King Kong is a film that is widely held as a classic of cinema – with some of the iconic monster photography in cinema. It is a film whose visual effects have held up very, very well, but narratively hasn’t held up quite as much.
You know the old joke of Slasher films having “30 minutes with jerks”. This film is more like “90 minutes with jerks”. Read more
Arguably, the best films of Roger Corman’s career were his adaptations of the works of Edgar Allen Poe he made with AIP. They had some of the highest on-screen production values of the films he directed, and had some of the finest actors he ever worked with – especially this film’s stand out star, Vincent Price. Read more
It’s interesting having viewed the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers after I’ve seen the remake. It’s interesting to see how many beats the remake cribbed from the original, but which executes on them so very differently, with a different emotional payoff. Read more
What’s worse than a horror film that’s bad? A horror film that’s bad because it’s boring and annoying. This is the issue with Death Valley, a slasher film with an interesting concept, that fails in the execution in multiple respects. Read more
Phase IV is an underrated, very weird film – the only dramatic film directed by Saul Bass, who is best known as designing the movie posters and opening credits sequences for the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Read more
I saw Doctor Strange last weekend, and video recorded myself talking about it! There are some minor spoilers towards the very end of the video.
Dark Angel (originally released as I Come in Peace in the US) is the film I wish Predator 2 was. Read more
Jackie Chan, as a performer, is frequently compared with Buster Keaton and, as I’ve mentioned in my own review of Police Story at Letterboxd, Charlie Chaplin.
Well, Mr. Vampire, a martial arts horror-comedy film produced by Jackie Chan’s friend and fellow member of the Five Little Fortunes, is what I’d probably describe as the Hong Kong equivalent of the Abbott and Costello Meet… movies. Read more
This Halloween we have a review of another Cronenberg film, with The Brood. Read more
This film is not good. Read more
There’s a bit in an episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip where the characters on the series serial-numbers-filed-off version of Saturday Night Live are working on a sketch for Thanksgiving where the turkey spurts absurd, Army of Darkness levels of blood when carved. The bit is not shown, only talked about – with one of the characters commenting about the Prop guy thinking the level of blood is unrealistic with the comment”If it’s just a realistic amount of blood, then it’s… extremely disturbing…”
That is, perhaps, Blood and Lace‘s greatest strength, and its weakness. Read more
There’s a new Godzilla film out (for a limited release) and I saw it in theaters. Here are my thoughts! Read more
Johnny To, as a director, has two extremes. On one end is gritty crime thrillers like the Election duology – which may have an action scene or two, but which otherwise are generally grounded in the real world. On the other end is Exiled, a film which has a fight scene early in the film where several characters in a firefight cause a table to flip and spin end over end with their bullet hits, but ultimately both come out of the fight uninjured. In the middle lies The Mission. Read more
Barbarian Queen II is, basically, a somewhat nihilistic gender-swapped version of the Robin Hood story – princess is heir to throne, king has gone off to war and is presumed killed in the field, with the King’s evil brother planning to usurp the throne, princess flees to forest and builds a band of bandits to fight back against Not-Prince-John. Read more
This film is freaking weird. Read more
Deathstalker II is a fun dumb movie. It’s the kind of film where there is a title-drop in the film that incorporates the number (sort of – the line being: “I’ll have my revenge, and Deathstalker too!”). It’s got a soundtrack by Casio, exterior sets from a Renaissance faire, pants made out of pleather because they ran out of their leather budget, and female characters who wear as little as possible in the hopes that the audience won’t pay attention to any of the rest of the film’s shortcomings. Read more
Man, this movie is freaking weird.
I should mention in advance, that I should give a trigger warning for this film. The movie has extensive scenes of domestic violence, both physical and psychological, caused not by a human, but by an artificial intelligence. Read more
There are some genres of cinema that have been lost to technological developments and rise of global interconnectivity. One of these genres is the “Italian knockoff of an successful American film.” One of the more impressive parts of this cinematic sub-genre is the science fiction film Starcrash, directed by Luigi Cozzi under an American pseudonym to conceal the film’s true nature. Read more
This time I’m taking a look at both seasons of Log Horizon. Read more
Videodrome is the weird stuff. It’s one of those movies that I’d held off on watching because of the film’s reputation for gore, and horrific content that would melt your mind and would leave you with nightmares. Read more
This week I’m taking a look at the anime series Shirobako, from 2015. (Video Revised to add missing end credits music and adjust some footage). Read more