When we first meet Matt (Rob Grabow), he is at rock bottom. Having been arrested 48 hours earlier for drunk and disorderly behaviour (he punched a bartender), Matt is released from the police lockup at night, and doubles over with delirium tremens on the station’s outdoor stairs. Such withdrawal, Matt says in voiceover, is “like…
Dashcam first published by Sight & Sound, Summer Edition 2022 Review: Presenting only what the characters see on their devices as a séance conducted over Zoom goes wrong, Rob Savage‘s feature debut Host (2020), co-written with his regular collaborators Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd during the first Covid lockdown, was pure ‘screenlife’ horror. This is…
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie first published by Little White Lies, as entry 156 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie opens with the ambassador Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey), his colleague François Thévenot (Paul Frankeur), François’ wife Simone (Delphine Seyrig) and younger sister Florence (Bulle Ogier) being driven…
Reel Britannia first published by VODzilla.co The word ‘cinema’ comes from the Ancient Greek for ‘movement’. This is because cinema is the domain of the moving image – but in his latest documentary on cinema, writer/director Jon Spira (Elstree 1976, 2015; Hollywood Bulldogs: The Rise and Fall of the Great British Stuntman, 2021) is also…
Sewer systems represent the intersection of high and low, clean and unclean, where the human spirit is reduced to its bodily functions, and where everything is both poisoned and purged – which is what makes them such an evocative setting in films ranging from Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949), Andrzej Wajda’s Kanal (1957), Shunya…
Crazy Mama first published by Little White Lies, as entry 155 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column “You ladies are dangerous. This is America.” The speaker is landlord Mr Albertson (Jim Backus), surprised to see, as he evicts Melba Stokes (Cloris Leachman) and her mother Sheba (Ann Sothern) for failing to meet rent on their hair…
Dark Glasses (Occhiali neri) first published by SciFiNow Giallo king Dario Argento‘s Dark Glasses (Occhiali neri) opens with a wide establishing shot of residential buildings in Rome’s leafy suburbs, and then various mobile shots looking upwards at roadside trees and apartment blocks. As it is revealed that the perspective belongs to Diana (Ilenia Pastorelli) at…
Lux Æterna first published by Little White Lies, as entry 154 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column “You are all in good health, but you cannot imagine the supreme happiness an epileptic feels in the moments before a fit. I would give perhaps my whole life in exchange for a few seconds of that felicity.” This…
Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry is, as text at its beginning states, a ‘fictionalisation’, but ‘inspired by real events and real people’. Adapted by Johnson and Matthew Miller from Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s 2015 book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, it opens with a 1996 meeting…
When Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein’s postmodern diptych of fake proto-slasher End Zone 2 (supposedly 1970, actually 2022) and its fake retrospective documentary The Once and Future Smash (2022) absurdly posited a ‘football revenge craze’ to which the original End Zone (putatively 1964) belonged, they might as well have been describing the subgenre from…
We first encounter Julie Alexander (Eliza Taylor), the put-upon protagonist of Erik Bernard’s I’ll Be Watching, through her work: a series of details from her paintings, all showing women gazing out into the middle distance, or into mirrors. One of her subjects floats fully clothed on a water’s surface, staring upwards like soon-to-drown Ophelia. Another…