Dipping another toe into the online stream, part two
My recent streaming seems to lean heavily into horror, with a few animated movies to lighten the […]
Review: Shanghai Joe (1973)
Director: Mario Caiano
Cast: Myoshin Hayakawa, Klaus Kinski, Gordon Mitchell, Claudio Undari, Carla Mancini,
Myoshin Hayakawa
Klaus Kinski
Gordon Mitchell
Claudio Undari
Carla Mancini
Plot: A Chinese immigrant, recently arrived in America, fights to free Mexican slaves from their cruel master.
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Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953): Criterion Blu-ray review
Criterion’s new dual-format 4K UHD/Blu-ray release of The Wages of Fear (1953) presents an opportunity to revisit Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic and examine just why it troubled its U.S. distributor and some critics with its […]
Dipping another toe into the online stream, part one
My plunge into streaming has been more rewarding than not, catching up with a slew of recent action movies as well as a variety of older movies I missed decades ago, or remember from television screenings back in the […]
Dipping a toe into the online stream
Until fairly recently I’ve avoided streaming – I like nothing better than handling physical media, taking small shiny disks out of their case and putting them back on the shelf as part of my collection after watching their contents. […]
A zombie romance, Nazis vs vampire, and sex and death in a Manhattan highrise from Vinegar Syndrome
With the end of my Vinegar Syndrome subscription, I’ll be getting a lot fewer disks from them this year, but there are still a few leftovers from last year to consider – I won’t miss things like Phillip Noyce’s Sliver […]
David Lynch on life, art and Eraserhead
In December 1981 I got to meet David Lynch and spend time with him in his office at Universal Studios as he recounted the remarkable story of making his first feature, Eraserhead (1977). But he talked about much more – his early life, his […]
Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970): Criterion Blu-ray review
Performance (1970), co-directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, is one of the key films to emerge from Britain towards the end of the 1960s, a turbulent decade during which the post-war order was challenged by a generation seeking to redefine […]
More folk horror, old and new
Three recent releases from England explore the survival into the modern world of ancient mystical forces, illustrating different aspects of folk horror. In Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre (2023) a pagan entity brings tragedy to a family; in […]
A world of horror from Arrow and Severin
Two recent box sets – Arrow’s J-Horror Rising and Severin’s All the Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 – provide a dizzying range of horror and fantasy movies from multiple cultures and cinematic traditions. Each set includes a range […]
Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language (2024)
Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language (2024) is a delightfully witty comedy of intertwined cultures, a blend of Winnipeg and Tehran, sparking surprising moments of recognition which affirm a shared humanity. Formally inventive, its layered […]