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.”…
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…
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…
Helen first published by Little White Lies “It’s not so easy to go back, I think”. So says Maria (Maria Vishnjakova), a young Estonian who, since arriving in Britain, has seen in her isolation “a chance to start over again… to reinvent myself”. Accordingly she has changed her tastes, her language and even her name…
The Atrocity Exhibition first published by Little White Lies, as entry 160 in my Cinema Psychotronicum colimn In 1970, J.G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition was first published by Jonathan Cape in the UK. This anti-novel has had a complicated publication history: all 15 of the (linked) stories that make up its chapters had already been…
Flatliners first published by Little White Lies, as entry 159 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column “I don’t know, you guys: it’s Halloween, there’s a full moon. Don’t you think we might be pushing it just a little bit?” So says Randy Steckle (Oliver Platt), some way into Joel Schumacher’s Flatliners, as he and four fellow…
Running Out Of Time (1999) / Running Out Of Time 2 (2001) first published by Little White Lies, as entry 158 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column It does not take long to find out why Johnnie To’s feature is called Running Out Of Time. For it begins with a man, Cheung Wah (Andy Lau), walking…
Profound Desires of the Gods first published by Little White Lies “The islanders aren’t particularly clever, so they get their stories and reality all mixed up. It just shows how simple and pure they are.” This is what Kariya (Kazuo Kitamura) says of his one-time Okinawan hosts near the end of Profound Desires of the…
Tremors first published by Little White Lies, as entry 157 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column Ron Underwood’s Tremors opens with Valentine McKee (Kevin Bacon) standing on the edge of a rocky cliff, and urinating onto the ground far below. He is first shown from the front in an extra wide shot too distant to allow…
The Black Phone first published by Little White Lies It is 1978, in North Denver, and Little Leaguer Finney Shaw (Mason Thomas), on the cusp of adolescence, is living in constant terror – and not just the usual teen angst about whether he can attract the attention of the girl he likes in his class…