Yet more notes on recent viewing, featuring horror – both high and low end – some documentaries and action movies, gritty realism and slick fantasy … eclectic and somewhat random.
Fall 2024 viewing round-up, part five
Tag: Fantasy
Fall 2024 viewing round-up, part three
Recent viewing includes a mix of horror, sci-fi and social commentary, from George A. Romero’s Bruiser (2000), about an office drone whose social invisibility enables him to exact revenge on his abusers, to a pair of Mexican Gothic fantasies about a vampire count; from an Aussie Indiana Jones rip-off to late effects artist David Allen’s passion project The Primevals, left unfinished at his death in 1999 but now completed by his friends.
The 5th Hong Kong International Film Festival, part six
Part six of my review of what I saw at the Fifth Hong Kong International Film Festival covers a handful of Eastern European films which range across history and politics and into fantasy.
Fall 2024 viewing round-up, part one
My Fall viewing has been the usual varied mix, with a number of new and classic Japanese movies, John Boorman’s fantasy sequel to The Exorcist, Alex Garland’s uncomfortably prescient depiction of America tearing itself apart, a slice of anti-drug exploitation from the late-’60s, and a surprising discovery from none other than Bert I. Gordon.
Masahiro Shinoda’s Demon Pond (1979): Criterion Blu-ray review
Japanese New Wave filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda uses a range of styles and registers to evoke Japan’s tumultuous Twentieth Century history in the allegorical fantasy Demon Pond (1979), newly restored in 4K and released in dual formats by Criterion.
Fantasy, horror and crazed killers on the exploitation fringes
I’m drawn to movies made on the fringes, far from the industry centre, and these have recently included low-budget ’60s noir, ultra cheap ’70s horror and ambitious ’90s direct-to-video sword-and-sorcery fantasy. Whatever their technical short-comings, all these movies exhibit the creative ingenuity essential to completing a feature with inadequate resources.
Murder, witchcraft, doppelgangers and stranded astronauts from Imprint
A batch of new releases from Imprint in Australia introduced me to the first feature of Gordon Hessler, a noirish mystery called Catacombs (1965), and provided an opportunity to revisit Sidney Hayers’ excellent supernatural tale Night of the Eagle (1962), Basil Dearden’s doppelganger thriller The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), and for the first time since its theatrical release in 1970 John Sturges’ Marooned, a movie which bridges the gap between science fiction and naturalistic drama which happens to involve a space mission.
Spring 2024 viewing, part two
Continuing my survey of what I’ve been watching this Spring… Mondo Macabro Mondo Macabro is a label I haven’t mentioned much here, though they specialize in genre movies from around the world and I’ve discovered some real oddities through them – like H. Tjut Djalil’s Mystics in Bali (1981) and Juan Lopez Moctezuma’s Alucarda (1975). […]
Spring 2024 viewing, part one
Springtime viewing includes monsters and murderous mayhem, found-footage rawness and classical Hollywood craft, psycho killers and ancient evil, along with a couple of westerns with different attitudes towards violence on the frontier.
Recent releases from the BFI, part two
A wildly varied selection of recent releases from the BFI, with Pat Jackson’s Western Approaches (1944) transforming propaganda into art via Jack Cardiff’s Technicolor photography; Roddy McDowall’s The Ballad of Tam Lin (1970) infusing folk horror with the Hollywood glamour of Ava Gardner; and Ken Russell turning the famous 1816 house party presided over by Lord Byron on the shores of Lake Geneva into a fever dream of the Romantics’ fascination with love and death in Gothic (1987)
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