If someone is asked to identify their favorite war-related films, most likely they’ll name American-made films, not because they’re inherently better but because they are often more prolific. The truth is that war is one of the few concepts that… Read More ›
Once a box office bomb but now a celebrated cult classic in its own right, Alex Proyas’s Dark City (1998) gives its audience the best of both worlds in its genre-bending plot — dystopian science fiction mixed with detective noir…. Read More ›
Writer-director Todd Solondz’s fifth feature Palindromes (2004) — a film of taboos, hypocrisies, and uncomfortable hard truths – is an exercise in cynical, cruel comedy. Known as one of independent cinema’s favorite misanthropes, Solondz paints his twisted portrait of motherhood,… Read More ›
When people talk about stories standing the test of time, at least in America, it’s usually in a hyperbolic sense, talking about the awesome impact and influence that a specific tale has infiltrated since conception. We certainly have stories to… Read More ›
In the history of the world, there have been indigenous peoples and there have been colonizers. In some cases, it’s viewed as a matter of perspective, but, by and large, if a people originated from a location, they are the… Read More ›
From September 2nd, 1945, until April 28th, 1952, the U.S. American military, backed by the U.K., occupied Japan in order to supervise the surrender of their competition in World War II. It’s easy for U.S. history today to recall the… Read More ›
Trigger Warning: The following review touches on topics directly related to the narrative involving death, terrorism, and sexual assault. The summer of 2001 was the perfect time for the release of Swordfish. Audiences had been primed for it thanks to… Read More ›
A Better Place (1997) is an obscure and underappreciated film that quietly resides in the shadows of the more well-known titles in Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse. Produced by Smith (Dogma) but written and directed by his longtime friend Vincent Pereira… Read More ›
Blowing me away (as well as many audience members) at Fantasia International Film Festival in 2024, Steppenwolf is a Kazakh language thriller which follows two characters — a psychopathic, murderous former police investigator (Berik Aytzhanov) and a woman consumed by… Read More ›
Marking the end of filmmaker Pim de la Parra’s time with Scorpio Films is the 1976 dramatic romance Wan Pipel (One People), which is having its worldwide Blu-ray debut via Cult Epics. Courtesy of Cult Epics and MVD Entertainment Group, EoM… Read More ›
In the visual essay “Rule Breaker: An Introduction to Sado Najajima” (2025), film critic Tom Mes calls director Sadao Nakajima (The Great Okinawa Yakuza War; Jeans Blues: No Future) one of “the Three Aces of Toei,” and laments that this… Read More ›
Content Warning: Themroc includes implied incest and cannibalism, which may be disturbing to some viewers. One of the best human experiences is discovery; that feeling of coming across something you’ve never heard of, seen, or discussed. Opportunities abound like this… Read More ›
We could sit here and discuss space nonsense for decades and decades ad nauseum about how horror franchises love to jump the proverbial shark and take their franchise to new and incredibly dumb heights. Hellraiser did it with their fourth… Read More ›
If you’re a completist then you most likely have seen Jason Goes to Hell, the ninth movie in the Friday the 13th franchise. It’s arguably not a *good* movie but is absolutely delightful, taking the series of films in a… Read More ›
A good plan gone wrong — it’s the staple of plenty of heist, confidence, and rescue tales as the protagonists have to figure out what to do when the plan goes sideways. Will they make it out alive? Will their… Read More ›
In January of 2025, Radiance Films released Underworld Beauty, a 1958 yakuza drama from filmmaker Seijun Suzuki, the second restoration by the boutique distributor of the filmmaker’s work. Now, with A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (1977), Radiance Films offers… Read More ›
What would you do to make amends with your past? For some, it means rolling up your sleeves and doing the hard work to atone; while, for others, it means living a life of abstinence. Both can be viewed as… Read More ›
Actor, writer, director Lau Kar-Leung is a staple of the Shaw Brothers Studio as evidenced by projects like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978), The Shadow Boxing (1979), The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (1984), and Disciples of the 36th Chamber… Read More ›
All the way up to the late 1990s, there had not yet been a satisfactory successor to Jaws, Steven Spielberg’s iconic 1975 blockbuster hit about a marine biologist and shark hunter taking down a man-eating great white shark. In walks… Read More ›
Trigger Warning: The narrative centers violence upon the LGBTQIA+ community and this may be distressing for sensitive viewers. If you’re reading this and, like me, you’ve heard of William Friedkin’s Cruising with Al Pacino (Heat), but have never seen it… Read More ›