I can now say from personal experience that watching horror movies a week after having a heart attack (even a relatively minor one) may not be the smartest idea – but I did enjoy these five eerie features.
Spooky
Category: Review
Chinese action and fantasy from Eureka
Recent releases from Eureka/Masters of Cinema showcase a range of Chinese martial arts movies, from Sammo Hung’s traditional The Iron-Fisted Monk (1977) to Tsui Hark’s genre redefining Once Upon a Time in China trilogy (1991-92) to Ricky Lau’s horror-comedy Mr. Vampire (1985) and Ronny Yu’s visually ravishing fantasy The Bride With White Hair (1993).
Indicator in a box
Indicator have done their usually exemplary job with a pair of recent box sets – one devoted to the five Fu Manchu movies written and produced by Harry Alan Towers in the late 1960s, all starring Christopher Lee in racial drag; the other showcasing six films from Columbia Pictures rather loosely gathered together and labelled film noir.
Ousmane Sembène’s Mandabi (1968): Criterion Blu-ray review
Known as the “father of African cinema”, Ousmane Sembène’s films grapple with issues of identity in the complex social and political conditions of post-colonial Africa. His second feature (and first in colour) Mandabi (1968) is a tragi-comedy about a proud man clinging to an outmoded patriarchal role whose life is upended when a nephew working in France sends him a money order for 25,000 francs.
Alan Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974): Criterion Blu-ray review
The quintessential ’70s paranoid thriller, Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974), gets a stunning restoration on Criterion’s new Blu-ray.
Michael Apted’s documentary legacy
A look back over the 7 Up series (1963-2019), filmmaker Michael Apted’s remarkable longitudinal documentary series following a diverse group of Britons from the age of seven to sixty-three. Following Apted’s death on January 7, it’s unclear whether the series will continue, but the most recent episode offers a deeply moving summation of the project’s meaning in its subjects’ lives.
Holiday viewing
Yet another mixed bag of viewing from classic westerns to Asian fantasy/horror, black comedies and science fiction, musicals and monsters.
Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent (1977): Criterion Blu-ray review
Criterion upgrade their bare-bones edition of Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent (1977) with an extras-packed Blu-ray restoration of this starkly beautiful war film which moves from visceral realism into religious allegory.
Recent Indicator viewing
Indicator continue to release exemplary editions of a wide range of movies, from obscure genre titles to classics to exploitation and occasional failed experiments. Recent viewing ranges from Max Ophuls’ exquisite domestic noir The Reckless Moment (1949) to Blake Edwards’ taut thriller Experiment in Terror (1962) and Arthur Lubin’s surprisingly good Gothic romance Footsteps in the Fog (1955).
Recent Kino Lorber releases
Kino Lorber’s prolific slate of releases is making a wide range of genre of genre titles available, some for the first time in decades – including some from the golden age of made-for-television movies like Paul Wendkos’ Fear No Evil (1968) and Jerry London’s Killdozer (1974)
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