With Scanners, his occasionally gory telepath thriller, David Cronenberg made a significant move from low-budget horror towards the mainstream.
Cronenberg in transition: Scanners (1981)
Tag: Science Fiction
Recent disks from England, part one
The latest Flipside release from the BFI, Bill Forsyth’s That Sinking Feeling, is like a cross between a gritty Ken Loach working class story and a Children’s Film Foundation fantasy of kid empowerment.
In real life, resetting is more difficult …
The consequences of one man’s decision in Steven Knight’s Locke outweigh the fate of the world in Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow.
Jodorowsky’s Dune: the triumph of imagination
Frank Pavich’s remarkable documentary allows the audience to see Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unfilmed Dune as one of the greatest movies never made.
Recent Viewing: April and May, part one
Once again, I’ve fallen way behind in commenting on the movies I’ve been watching: ’60s political agitprop, mind-bending time travel, demonic possession, cheesy B monster movies, Cold War submarines and futuristic trains …
Spectrum of Horror: from class to crass
Two disks illustrate the spectrum of British genre production in the ’70s and ’80s: Pete Walker’s cinematic horror Frightmare and David Rudkin’s epic BBC fantasy Artemis 81.
Notes on Recent Viewing, part three
Continuing a brief survey of the past month’s disk viewing; sci-fi, horror and Archer, an animation discovery which is one of the best current series.
Notes on Recent Viewing, part one
A survey of recent viewing covers approaches to realism, metaphor, horror and war in a range of films from the 1920s to the 2010s.
Genre On Disk, part two
The concept of genre is endlessly malleable, permitting filmmakers to borrow, invent, mix and match narrative elements to create a seemingly inexhaustible array of stories which combine familiar elements in new, or not so new, ways.
Genre Viewing: Science Fiction
Much of what I’ve seen in a theatre this year qualifies as genre movies. One day I’ll have to sit down and evaluate my viewing in some systematic way to figure out why I spend less and less time on serious drama as I get older (I have a friend who’s just the opposite; he […]
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