Review | Cagey Films

Dragons and ghosts, resurrected in 4K

Posted on June 28, 2023June 27, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Julia (Mia Farrow) welcomes her own doom as expiation for her guilt in Richard Loncraine's Full Circle (The Haunting of Julia, 1977)

A pair of new 4K restorations resurrect two neglected films which deserve to be better known – Matthew Robbins’ Dragonslayer (1981), one of the finest fantasy films ever made which has never fared well on home video, but looks wonderful in this new edition; and Richard Loncraine’s atmospheric Full Circle (The Haunting of Julia, 1977), adapted from Peter Straub’s first horror novel, featuring Mia Farrow as a mother traumatized by the death of her child, who becomes immersed in a decades-old mystery when she moves into a haunted house.

Serendipity at the mall: disk discoveries from England and Australia

Posted on June 21, 2023June 20, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Compromised effects undermine producer George Pal's attempt to depict space travel in Byron Haskin's Conquest of Space (1955)

A recent trip to one of the last places in Winnipeg where you can actually buy movies on disk, armed with a bag full of DVDs and Blu-rays to trade, netted an interesting assortment of items, new and used, including some from the UK and Australia; it brought back the pleasures of in-store shopping and immediately being able to go home and watch what I’d just bought.

Comedy, disasters, crime and horror: more new releases

Posted on June 14, 2023June 12, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

The Bowler (Janeane Garofalo) has issues with her father's skull in Kinka Usher's Mystery Men (1999)

I’ve been revisiting some familiar movies in upgraded editions, with new transfers and extras; some I haven’t seen in years, even decades, They run the gamut from horror to comedy, thrillers to superheroes, zombies and monsters.

Murder, robbery and paranormal activity: three new releases

Posted on June 7, 2023June 6, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Bank robber Milan (Johnny Hallyday) seems weary of his life choices in Patrice Leconte's Man on the Train (2002)

Three recent releases spanning nine decades offer radically different viewing experiences, from James Whale’s pre-Code courtroom drama The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933), rife with bourgeois misogyny, to Patrice Leconte’s Man on the Train (2002), steeped in existential weariness, to Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s Something in the Dirt (2022), in which the residents of a nondescript Los Angeles apartment discover a portal to cosmic horror.

Action and politics in ’70s thrillers

Posted on May 31, 2023May 30, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Nice large-scale miniatures in Andrew V. McLaglen's North Sea Hijack (1980)

Thrillers may exploit real-world issues for story material, but often distort and trivialize reality in their quest to entertain. The terrorism which erupted and spread during the 1970s is used in quite different ways in Otto Preminger’s Rosebud (1975), John Frankenheimer’s Black Sunday (1976) and Andrew V. McLaglen’s North Sea Hijack (1980).

Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill (1967): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on May 20, 2023May 19, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Misako (Annu Mari) lures Hanada (Joe Shishido) into danger in Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill (1967)

Criterion’s new dual-format release of Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill (1967) showcases a 4K transfer of this radical deconstruction of the yakuza genre starring the idiosyncratic Joe Shishido as hit man who finds himself disappearing down a rabbit hole of paranoia and violence.

Establishing Shots by Kevin Nikkel: book review

Posted on May 17, 2023July 1, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Prairie Gothic: Sara Canning in Danishka Esterhazy's Black Field (2009)

In Establishing Shots: An Oral History of the Winnipeg Film Group (University of Manitoba Press), Kevin Nikkel pieces together the fifty-year history of the WFG through a collection of interviews recorded for the documentary Tales From the Winnipeg Film Group (2017), which he directed in collaboration with Dave Barber.

Román Viñoly Barreto’s El vampiro negro (1953)

Posted on May 10, 2023May 9, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Flicker Alley and the Film Noir Foundation have released another fascinating Argentine movie from the early 1950s on the heels of two revelatory releases last year. Román Viñoly Barreto’s El vampiro negro (1953) is even more intriguing than Viñoly Barreto’s The Beast Must Die (1952) and Fernando Ayala’s The Bitter Stems (1956), being a reworking of Fritz Lang’s M (1931) from a very different perspective – that of a mother whose daughter is at risk from the serial child murderer.

More Italo-horror: The Good, the Bad and the Gory

Posted on May 3, 2023April 30, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Nevenka (Daliah Lavi) is trapped in a sado-masochistic relationship in Mario Bava's The Whip and the Body (1963)

Several new (and a couple of slightly older ) releases restore a range of Italian horrors from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, including a pair of artless movies by Bruno Mattei, Hell of the Living Dead (1980) and Rats: Night of Terror (1984); one of Mario Bava’s finest (and most perverse) Gothics, The Whip and the Body (1963), as well as his final made-for-television work, La Venere d’Ille (1979), co-directed by his son Lamberto; and a 4K restoration of Lucio Fulci’s gore masterpiece City of the Living Dead (1980).

Martin (1976): George A. Romero’s masterpiece

Posted on April 26, 2023December 26, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Martin (John Amplas) stalks another victim in George A. Romero's Martin (1976)

Although overshadowed by his hugely influential cycle of zombie movies, Martin (1976), George A. Romero’s treatment of vampirism, is his finest work, a complex and subtle meditation on myth, madness, violence and social collapse in mid-’70s America. Second Sight’s 4K restoration finally gives this masterpiece the release it deserves.

Category: Review