Film Reviews

The film avoids the tropes of “lovers facing a terminal illness” movies for the most part, offering instead a quirky, sometimes acerbic, original take on such subject matter.

Cosmic, or Lovecraftian horror, can be defined as ”Fear and awe we feel when confronted by phenomena beyond our comprehension, whose scope extends beyond the narrow field of human affairs and boasts of cosmic significance”.  It is a rather broad ...

Irish/U.S./U.K./Swedish/Belgian coproduction Sea Fever (2019) is a tense, thrilling creature feature boasting compelling drama and fine performances. From writer/director Neasa Hardiman — who has previously worked on the Marvel Netflix series Inhumans(2017) and Jessica Jones (2015) —  the film focuses ...

The Flower in Hell Korean classic The Flower in Hell (Jiokhwa; 1958) is a gritty drama with a memorable climax that uses thriller and horror elements to great effect. It is also an eye-opening time capsule of South Korea in ...

Ida Lupino was the second woman inducted into the DGA. It’s the reason I felt like I should review this box set and should is the accurate word, unfortunately. No other female directors were working in Hollywood when she was, ...

In the Korean chiller The Devil’s Stairway (Maeui Gyedan [1964]; AKA The Evil Stairs), director Lee ManHui combines film noir light and shade flourishes with thriller and horror elements, with a bit of melodrama added for good measure. The result ...

There are two outcomes for the subjugated citizens of this bleak portrait of Turkey under the rule of presidential despot Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: you’re either killed by the state or enslaved by it. It’s not clear which is worse. Orçun ...

Lund International Fantastic Film Festival Reviews: Manriki Serves Up Plastic Surgery Horrors; White Snake Offers Breathtaking Chinese Animation Manriki The following films screened at the 2019 Lund International Fantastic Film Festival, held in Lund, Sweden, from 27 September–5 October. Japanese ...

The visionary Paul Verhoeven’s much-maligned $45m schlockbuster Showgirls, a sleazy rags-to-sequins story of potato chips and backstabbing dancers set amid the cum-slicked clubs of Las Vegas, was received with almost unanimous disgust upon its release in 1995. Elizabeth Berkley plays ...

The following films screened at the 2019 Lund International Fantastic Film Festival (Lund, Sweden) from September 27 until October 5. Hungarian film His Master’s Voice (Az Úr hangja, 2018) is a trippy, challenging work focused on a man’s search for ...