Category Archives: Reviews
Review: Mom and Dad (USA 2017)
Mom and Dad, the latest film from Brian Taylor, one-half of the pair of madmen behind the miraculous Crank films, is similarly … well, apeshit bananas for lack of a better term. Taylor, working from his own screenplay, posits a … Continue reading
Review: The Avenging Eagle AKA: Long xie shi san ying; Cold Blooded Eagles (Hong Kong 1978)
Avenging Eagle is solid old school kung fu from the Shaw Brothers. It’s no pinnacle of the genre – there really isn’t that much to distinguish it from most Shaw martial arts films – but a good cast, baroque weaponry, … Continue reading
Review: Justice League (USA 2017)
Why did I even watch this? Masochism? Completism? I truly loathed Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (a movie as turgid as its name), and the execrable Suicide Squad, and had very low expectations for this Frankenstein’s … Continue reading
Review: Cold Hell aka Die Hölle (Austria/Germany 2017)
Cold Hell is a nasty little treat. I was expecting a thriller, but not a full-blown modern giallo. Cold Hell revels in the lurid sexualized violence and the neon washes and shadows of the best of Dario Argento and Sergio … Continue reading
Review: Face Behind the Mask (Hong Kong 1974)
Chen Chi-hwa’s Face Behind the Mask is a solid piece of wu xia entertainment. It’s not revolutionary, and it really doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done before. However, all the elements come together nicely to create a quick-paced piece … Continue reading
Review: Before We Vanish (Japan 2017)
Before We Vanish is a return to a rarely-seen side of Kiyoshi Kurosawa – a puckish, tongue-in-cheek take on the atmospheric horror that is the master’s stock-in-trade. Though he’s much better known for his deadly serious supernatural horror like Kairo … Continue reading
Review: Ten Violent Women (USA 1982)
I happened to watch a while back, and then was surprised to see that notorious grindhouse director Ted V. Mikels had just recently passed away. I wish this could be a better epigraph, but it’s a pretty terrible movie – … Continue reading
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (Spain/Italy 1974)
This Spanish/Italian co-production is surprisingly smart for its era, mingling straight-up Romero-esque zombie action with the anti-authoritarian paranoia and ecological concerns of The Crazies or Grapes of Death.
Review: Daguerreotype (Japan/France 2017)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest horror film represents a major change in at least one respect. Filming in French, with a non-Japanese cast, takes Kurosawa out of his comfort zone, but he demonstrates that his touch with mood and actors remains constant … Continue reading
Blade of the Immortal (Japan 2017)
Takashi Miike’s Blade of the Immortal is an adaptation of the long-running (30 volumes) and extremely popular supernatural samurai manga about an immortal ronin named Manji. I never made it past the first volume of the series, but it’s easy … Continue reading