Police Story 3: Supercop first published by Little White Lies, as entry 161 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column “I didn’t do it alone,” Inspector Chan Ka-kui will say whenever he appears before committees or at press conferences, in what becomes a running joke in Police Story (1985), “It was a success because of careful planning.”…
Orphan: First Kill first published by VODzilla.co Jaume Collet-Serra’s Orphan (2009) told the story of a bourgeois family adopting a nine-year-old in an attempt to fill the chasm of grief left by a stillbirth, only to discover that they have let into their already fraught household a psychopathic murderess (played by Isabelle Fuhrman) who is…
Strawberry Mansion first published by SciFiNow As he stays in the home of elderly, eccentric ‘atmosphere creator’ Bella (Penny Fuller) to audit her dreams, Preble (Kentucker Audley) finds himself sharing a room with Bella’s pet Sugar Baby. This tiny tortoise spends most of his time in a pink-lit terrarium, eating strawberries. If the terrarium is…
Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (Seperti dendam, rundi harus dibayar tuntas) first published by Little White Lies “Only a man who can’t get it up can face death without fear.” This line comes from near the beginning of Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, just after we have seen the film’s young…
“Why can’t you be more like Stephen Frears?”: Peter Strickland on Flux Gourmet and outsider artistry first published in a much shorter version by Little White Lies. While our national cinema is dominated by ‘heritage’ stories, plucky underdog comedies and urban miserabilism, the films of writer/director Peter Strickland are eccentric outliers. His 2009 feature debut…
“I want inside your little world,” Dan (Vincent Stalba) tells Sandy (Maddie Nichols), turning up on her doorstep – with a bunch of red roses and romantic intentions – at the beginning of Sam Fox’s Fck’n Nuts. Dan loves Sandy so much that he wants to see her at home and finally to ‘meet the…
This is in fact more than one film. It is of course Oscar Harding’s documentary A Life on the Farm, but within that is its subject, another film (or films) entitled Life on the Farm (no indefinite article) which forms its starting point and principal subject. These amateur videos shot on VHS camcorder by ageing…
Silent Land (Cicha ziemia) first published by Little White Lies “Guests are aways welcome in our town,” police chief Giuseppe (Claudio Bigagli) tells Anna (Agnieszka Żulewska) some way into Aga Woszczyńska’s Silent Land (Cicha Ziemia). Indeed this small town on an Italian island is very accommodating to Anna and her husband Adam (Dobromir Dymecki), vacationing…
Bodies Bodies Bodies and spotlight on Rachel Sennott first published by Sight and Sound, Sept 2022 Review: In the slasher subgenre, it is the younger generation and their peculiar anxieties which tend to be put under the knife – for its main characters are typically high school pupils or university co-eds, cut off in their…
“This is something that you’re not going to survive,” says big bearded Ricky (Justan Wagner) who has just rained a series of heavy punches to the face of Jack (Thomas Roach) lying supine on the floor and is about to strangle the bloodied, fallen man, with Jack’s girlfriend Rachel (Nicole Tudor) left for dead in the…
Four FrightFest 2023 Documentaries includes capsule reviews of: 1982: Greatest Geek Year Ever!, Enter the Clones of Bruce Lee, I Am Monsters!, The Darkside of Society Full reviews of The J-Horror Virus and Otto Baxter: Not A Fucking Horror Movie + The Puppet Asylum can be found elsewhere 1982 Greatest Geek Year Ever! (2022-23) UK…