Honorable Mention I once suggested that the Strugatsky Brothers — Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, perhaps the most famous Soviet era science fiction and fantasy writers — might be the most adapted science fiction writers in the world. The truth is that Ray Bradbury probably wins because of all the episodes of his Ray Bradbury Theater […]
Read more "Ponedelnik nachinaetsya v subbotu [Monday Begins on Saturday] (1965)"If you were following the horror and science fiction conventions back in 2018, one film kept getting mentioned over and over again: Charlie Steeds’ The Barge People. It was an intense — and gory — horror film made on a tiny budget, reminiscent of the backwoods horror films of the Eighties, only with gill men. […]
Read more "Gods of the Deep (2023)"I’ve written extensively about Soviet era animation, which is full of surprises as it never had any of the constraints American animation has: not only did they make films in all sorts of strange styles instead of the standard American Disney romantic realism, not only did they experiment with different technologies and styles, but a […]
Read more "Khorosho zabytoe staroe [No such thing as new ] (2003)"Honorable Mention It seems to me that Wes Anderson’s films tend to have some element added to them that distances the audience from what is taking place on stage. Framing stories, historical accounts, television reports, narration… The list is long, and it varies from film to film how much it is used. I suppose it […]
Read more "Asteroid City (2023)"I’ve written extensively about the animated films made during the Soviet Era (and watched even more of them than I’ve written about), but curiously enough, I don’t think I’ve ever reviewed a feature length film made in Soviet Russia. I’ve written about a few Czech and Hungarian efforts, but no Russian features. In fact I […]
Read more "Klyuch [The Key] (1961)"Okay, I’m speechless. This is one of the wildest and most entertaining Polonia Brothers offerings in a long time. It has a surprising level of finish (thanks to a lot of colorful and technically impressive footage of some major city) a dark and troubling main plotline. And a major sequence where everything goes bat(*bleep*) wrong. […]
Read more "Cocaine Shark (2023)"(aka Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat; Demons 6: De Profundis) Honorable Mention It is hard to convey just how bizarre this film is. Although, if you’ve seen Luigi Cozzi’s next film, Blood on Melies’ Moon (which he didn’t get around to until 2016) then you’ve got some idea of what to expect. What we’re […]
Read more "The Black Cat [Il gatto nero] (1989)"Don’t expect me to explain it. So much of what has happened in the film industry lately doesn’t make sense. Perhaps it was merely that New Line (or whoever owns the rights to New Line’s corpse, to be precise) got greedy. Perhaps the rights are all snarled up in some thoroughly confounding sort of way. […]
Read more "Critters: A New Binge (2019)"Wow. I’m struggling to figure out what to say about this one. The Hyperborean is one of the most unique science fiction films I’ve seen in a long time. It doesn’t fit into any of our old familiar categories, although I‘m sure there are people out there looking at the trailer and saying something like, […]
Read more "The Hyperborean (2023)"(Literal Translation: Virgin Japanese fought in another world) I watched this one because Shûsuke Kaneko directed it. You know, the guy who directed the stunning Heisei era Gamera trilogy? Which, yes, does sound like I’m trying to find someone else to blame. After all, with a title like Danger Dolls, we all know what to expect: […]
Read more "Shôjo wa isekai de tatakatta [Danger Dolls] (2014)"
rivets on the poster 