Movies, TV, Streaming? Hey. It's All Entertainment!
Oh no, not another Nosferatu movie, although to be fair, you don’t need to have seen Nosferat-one to enjoy this. FW Murnau’s silent version has never quite gone away as a pop-culture icon, but Werner Herzog already exhumed the horrible vampire Court Orlock in 1979, and since all versions of...
An automatic awards-season front runner for Daniel Craig as best actor, Luca Guadagnino’s deliberately louche adaptation of the semi-autobiographical 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs is easily his most cohesive film to date. My regular reader will know that I’ve not found much to admire in his Suspiria, Bones and All or Challengers, but...
‘The magical film that haunted the dreams of a generation’ runs the ad-line for this blu-ray release, the first time that this notorious Brothers Grimm adaptation has been released in this format. ‘The scary AF East German fantasy f*ckery that freaked out millions of unwary children’ would be just as...
Shouldn’t Star Wars be, like, you know, for kids? That’s clearly the assumption behind the latest Disney spin-off, which differs from most of the other offshoots in aiming squarely at the very, very little ones. ‘Isn’t it wizard!?’ exclaims one of the moppets featured in Star Wars; Skeleton Crew, the...
Standing up for the indie is a big part of what we do; there are genres, and there are sub-genres, and then there are micro genres; there’s a specific kind of indie romcom that isn’t really a romcom at all, but you know it when you see it; it’s when...
‘There must be no end, only a new beginning’ is the punchline of sorts to Ray Milland’s low-budget kinda apocalypse, kinda survivalist thriller. On Blu-ray for the first time in the UK from the Radiance imprint and ideally purchased in HMV Cardiff, Panic in Year Zero has an obvious relevance...
Adapting his own play, writer Ronald Harwood evokes the spirit of the ultimate ham actor, Donald Wolfit, in this wonderfully arch character drama from Peter Yates. Known only as Sir, this Shakespearean firebrand is played to the hilt by Albert Finney; an opening scene in which he stops a train...
One of the great milestones in cinema history, writer and director Benjamin Christensen’s film is a documentary that’s reasonably summarized by its 1968 reissue title Witchcraft Through the Ages. That version, edited and with a commentary by no less an authority on the arcane than William Burroughs, is included in...
Ready to off-road? Never mind a Rotten Tomatoes page, Toshio Matsumoto’s 1988 movie doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page; we’re a long way from Kansas now, Toto, but that’s no bad thing in this instance. Dogra Magra gets a blu-ray treatment for the first time outside of Japan with this...
‘We’ll have a good story to tell,’ one woodcutter blithely tells another in Tokuzō Tanaka’s philosophically rich ghost story; it’s one of three supernaturally-themed stories told in a new boxed-set from Radiance, Daiei Gothic – Japanese Ghost Stories (LE). Providing the rather startling image for the cover, The Snow Woman...
I’m not sure why I’ve not previously set eyes on Gordon Hessler’s 1969 Gothic horror The Oblong Box, but from the vivid opening goat sacrifice onwards, it’s very much a cherishable hidden gem of the genre that even an old sourpuss critic like Leslie Halliwell admired for its ‘background action.’...
The title quote, of course, comes from Tolstoy; ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ That’s a great jumping off point for an observational comedy drama, and Haroula Rose’s follow up to her accomplished debut Once Upon A River more than lives up to that...
Rules, rules, rules; are YOU a demon seeking to interfere maliciously with the lives of real mortals? Are YOUR activities curtailed by unnecessary red tape and paperwork? Our hotline operators are keen to speak to you, since Finn Parker’s popular Smile franchise is just the latest example of supernatural forces...
‘We’re a doomed crew on a doomed ship,’ is a terse summary of the contents of André Øvredal’s The Last Journey of the Demeter; if you recognise something about that title, it’s probably because this handsome Dreamworks period-vampire film is based on a chapter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the one in...
When the sun sets…that’s when the show starts,’ comments Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh) to Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) at a drive-in screening of thrillers Night Moves and The Drowning Pool in writer/director Gary Dauberman’s adaptation of Stephen King’s game-changing vampire novel, originally published in 1975. It’s been the subject of...
Well, it took a few decades, but I finally saw The Black Bird, a detective movie spoof from 1975 that’s extremely hard to find; like many obscure movies, it’s turned up on YouTube to enlighten the hardy few who seek these things out. A specific parody, a sequel and almost...
Radiance are providing some rare insight into the 60’s output of Elio Petri, perhaps best known for The Tenth Victim, as an assassination game movie widely seen as a predecessor of Running Man and Hunger Games. Anything but a one-trick pony, Petri’s work is far too diverse to be summed...
It’s not just any old Megalopolis, it’s Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, with the legendary writer-director-producer putting his name on this as if to distinguish this from anyone else who might have a Megalopolis of their own. Forty years in the making, and $120 million in cost to the creator, Megalopolis...
After various elements of Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim’s script were artfully ‘remixed’ for Rian Johnson’s Knives Out and Glass Onion, it’s something of a treat to go back to the source. Herbert Ross did a bang up job of directing The Last of Sheila, but it’s the literate, urbane...
How do you like your film noir? To misquote the Supersister song, I prefer my noir like I like my gravel, hot, hard and black. Helmut Käutner’s 1961 drama is stark stuff, a black-market economy drama in which lives are trampled in the name of progress. Germany is depicted undergoing...
Do you review shorts? It’s a question that comes up a lot, and the answer is a yes; here’s one from last month. Anthony Columbus’ Alice and the Little Green Men is another one that’s worth a review; it’s got a title that might suggest some kind of sci-fi whimsy...
WTAF happened to Blumhouse? In 2023, the horror imprint could do not wrong with mega-hits like M3GAN, and Five Nights at Freddy’s, while even the more played out Exorcist and Insidious horror franchises both grossed over $150 million each. In 2024, they can’t buy a hit. Shonky low-brow fare like...
Radiance’s care and consideration for selecting, restoring and supporting classic films on blu-ray is the exact opposite of the careless, slapdash attitude that most streaming platforms provide; it’s a pleasure to unpack each film they supply. Their World Noir Vol 1 package was a sell-out, and they’re back with three...
Continuing with today’s golden theme…for a bestselling novelist, Wilbur Smith’s work rarely ended up on the big screen: Roger Moore did his best to realize his canon, starring with Lee Marvin in 1976’s Shout at The Devil, and also in 1974’s Gold, adapted from Smith’s excitingly-titled novel Gold Mine. Producer...
‘I’ve been looking for the Third Programme and all I can find is comedy and crudity,’ says an old geezer twiddling with the knob of his wireless in Michael Balcon’s production of Basil Dearden’s Cage of Gold. Yes, things were clearly going to the dogs in 1950, when a beautiful...
‘If anyone asks, tell them you are stuffed,’ runs a line from Will Speck and Josh Gordon’s popular 2022 musical comedy for family audiences; an adaptation of the children’s story The House on East 88th Street by Bernard Waber. We’re kinda used to CGI characters these days, and surprisingly few...
The BBC Genome allows us to trace the highs and lows of a viewing history; in this case, solving a mystery for me. Why does any mention of the film Tora! Tora! Tora! fill me with deep unenthusiasm? Let’s look back to Christmas 1976, and a prime time BBC screening the day...
If nothing else, streaming is becoming so annoying, it’s driving me back to the cinema. Viewing experiences ruined by adverts? Check. Your television constanty spewing out noisy adverts when it’s supposedly resting, like a constant, unwanted household billboard advertising junk you’d never watch? Check. Perhaps it’s part of the reason...
Aldo Lado’s Who Saw Her Die? occupies a rather strange place in film history. It’s a giallo, and a rather bloodless one, which is a good thing because the predatory, stabby nature of the garden-variety giallo hasn’t weathered well. Bond stars George Lazenby and Adolfo Celi star in a Venetian...
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