The things I get myself into… Okay, anytime you try some long-lost film, you know the odds. Most films made by someone you never heard of, in a city without a major film industry are going to be terrible, or worse. We know that. And, yes, M. Night Shyamalan managed to do his best work […]
Read more "Video Wars (1983)"I’ve been looking for this one for a while. Back in 2011, Jeff Waltrowski released an interesting microbudgeted faux-Thirties film called It Came from Yesterday which riffed on the old adventure serials. Jeff himself starred as Professor Jack Cranston, genius inventor and the head of the crime-fighting Electric Club, which was a sort of cross […]
Read more "Project: Valkyrie (2002)"I have no idea what to make of this film. And considering that this is the latest film to come from the fertile mind of performance artist and Indie director Cory McAbee, that’s a good thing. He’s been making weird and innovative films and music videos for years now, not to mention several albums of […]
Read more "Deep Astronomy and the Romantic Sciences (2022)"(aka, Mr. MacKinley’s Flight) This is a strange, strange film. I mean, really, really strange. And in all the best ways. Poor Mr. MacKinley. He’s about as grey and average a guy as you could hope to find in the advertising industry. Except that he dreams of one day having lots and lots of children […]
Read more "Begstvo mistera Mak-Kinli [Escape of Mr. McKinley] (1975)"I’m not even sure where to begin with this one. I suppose it would help if I pointed out that Professor Kleks first appeared in a classic Polish children’s book back in the Forties. The author, Jan Brzechwa wrote three books about the character, and, in the Eighties, they actually filmed three movies about Professor […]
Read more "Pan Kleks w kosmosie [Mr. Blob in the Universe] (1988)"Recently, I’ve reviewed two movies by one of my favorites of the younger generation of Japanese anime directors, Mamoru Hosada. So it seems inevitable that I would also catch up with a film by yet another talented young Anime director, one of the best of the group often referred to as “the next Miyazaki” — […]
Read more "Ai no utagoe o kikasete [Sing a Bit of Harmony] (2021)"(literal title: The Dragon and the Freckle Princess) Mamoru Hosada is perhaps the best of that generation of young anime directors who have all been called “the next Miyazaki.” Although, to be fair, I still prefer his early films, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars to anything he’s made since. He first started […]
Read more "Ryû to sobakasu no hime [Belle] (2021)"Curiouser and curiouser. This was my third early Sixties Italian science fiction film for the weekend. And, by far, the oddest. Even for the early Sixties. Now there are still a few little-known science fiction movies from the age before Lucas lurking out there which I haven’t seen yet. But it isn’t always easy to […]
Read more "La poupée [The Doll] (1962)"There is bad, and then there is epically bad. And then there’s Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. Look, there just aren’t enough words out there to convey how dreadful this thing is. Although “Sammy Petrillo” would be a good start. He and the official star of this film, Duke Mitchell, were the nightclub act you […]
Read more "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)"(Literal Title: 28 1/2 Delusional Giant) I never thought I would see this film. I suppose I could blame Mamoru Oshii for this: after all, his rather strange career has gone in a lot of very odd directions since he made the films which are hailed as his big classics: The Ghost in the Shell […]
Read more "28 1/2 mousou no kyojin [28 1/2] (2010)"
rivets on the poster 