There are some movies you know you are never ever, ever going to watch. Nope, wouldn’t even consider it, not for a moment. And yet, I don’t know how it happens, but you end up just giving in and watching them anyway. Take City of Rott 2, for example. I first learned about this one […]
Read more "City of Rott 2 (2014)"I’ll confess it. I like Frank Sudol’s weird little animated films a lot more than I should. I first encountered him in the anthology film, Monsterland (2016), to which he contributed a funny but gory animated short which went on a little too long. I then caught his feature film, Shock Invasion (2010), a gleefully black […]
Read more "City of Rott (2006)"(aka, Phoenix 2772, Phoenix 2772: The Cosmic Zone of Love. Literal translation: Phoenix 2772: Space Creature) Osamu Tezuka. It’s really hard to grasp Tezuka’s place within the Anime and Manga world. Perhaps the best comparison might be to Walt Disney, although that really doesn’t quite cover it either. Yes, his Astroboy series — and the […]
Read more "Hi no tori 2772: Ai no kosumozôn [Space Firebird 2772] (1980)"I’m not sure you can really call this one an “animated film.” Well, the little puppet characters do move at times — or so it seems But most of the time they just stand there. In fact, a surprising amount of the movement in this film is accomplished with cuts, or camera movements, or something […]
Read more "H.P. Lovecraft’s Dunwich Horror and Other Stories [H.P. Lovecraft no Dunwich Horror Sonota no Monogatari] (2007)"When any new form of media arrives, there are always a lot of inventive ways devised to make use of them. Mind you, a lot of them don’t last very long. One of the odder ones — and, curiously, one that outlived the media type that spawned it — was the OVA. OVA stands for […]
Read more "Dragon’s Heaven (1988)"You never know what you’ll find next on Tubi. In this case, it was a very strange animated film which was almost entirely the work of a single — and singularly whacked out — creator, Frank Sudol. It’s quite difficult to explain his films. All but one of them were made in an odd but […]
Read more "Shock Invasion (2010)"(aka, GoShogun: The Time Stranger) There’s weird, then there’s Japanese Anime weird. And if you want proof you need look no further than GoShogun: The Time Étranger: here we have a children’s bright and colorful Giant robot television series, much in the vein of Voltron, which was adapted four years after the series ran into […]
Read more "Sengoku machine GoShogun: toki no ihôjin [GoShogun: The Time Étranger] (1985)"What a lovely little film! For some reason, some of the best stop motion animated short films ever made came out of Eastern Europe in the SIxties and Seventies. I honestly don’t know why this was true, perhaps because of they applied their traditions of craftsmanship in making toys and dolls to creating the wondrously […]
Read more "Kybernetická babicka [Cybernetic Grandmother] (1962)"What we have here is a Miyazaki-esque Anime Fantasy/Science Fiction film for young viewers about Aoyama, a nine-year-old boy who is obsessed with, ummm… Boobs. Yes, you read that right. Women’s breasts. And he’s in love with One, the girl from the Dentist’s office because she, ummm… Has an exceptionally large pair. Right. In a […]
Read more "Pengin haiwei [Penguin Highway] (2018)"Ah, yes, the anthology film. The truth is, it’s been around for a long time, one can even point at the silent horror classics, Destiny (1921, directed by Fritz Lang) and Paul Leni’s 1924 film, Waxworks, as two of the earlier examples. I really have no idea what movie was the first anthology film, nor […]
Read more "Monsterland (2016)"
rivets on the poster 