One of the elements of the so-called “Ozploitation” era of Australian cinema that has always seemed the strangest to me is how many talented directors made a few, highly regarded films but never went on to make much of anything else. A few of them bogged down in television, turning out episodes of TV shows, […]
Read more "The Big Hurt (1986)"You need to pay attention to Ed Kirk. If you haven’t noticed him yet, he just released Future Soldier, a beautiful micro-budgeted feature film which is more polished and better constructed than a lot of the science fiction films out there — including some which are far more expensive. While this is his first feature […]
Read more "Future Soldier (2023)"I’ve ignored this one for years because it it isn’t what it is supposed to be. Well, at least if you judge it by its title. Now my previous attitude wasn’t entirely unfair: after all, that title is borrowed from Bert I. Gordon’s 1958 cheapie about teenagers, a cave and a giant spider. Which is […]
Read more "Earth vs. the Spider (2001)"(aka, Nemesis 4: City of Angels) I think the phrase we need here is “cinematic whiplash.” For anyone who saw Nemesis 3: Time Lapse (1996) before watching Nemesis 4, that is. Now the whole Nemesis series was the brainchild of the prolific low budget purveyor of kickboxing cyborgs and high energy action films, Albert Pyun. His […]
Read more "Nemesis 4: Death Angel (1996)"Right. Westerns. Let’s face it, they’re dead and gone. People keep trying to revive them, we’ve got one or two good movies along the way, but the reality is, the Western is dead. Finished. Kaput. Which didn’t stop people from trying to make space Westerns, like Outland, Space Rage, Oblivion, and (best of all) Firefly. Nor […]
Read more "Death Collector (1988)"I stumbled on this one by accident. It was a video on Archive.org, one that was poorly labeled, and was obviously from somewhere in the middle of a much longer story. But, as soon as I saw it, it had me hooked. Aidan 5 doesn’t look like anything you’ve seen before, even if it isn’t […]
Read more "Aidan 5 (2009–2018)"It was called “No Wave Film.” Although that wasn’t the official name: it was borrowed from the No Wave underground music movement which was already growing at the time and involved many of the same people. Some people called it the “New Cinema,” which was actually the name of the theater which showed these films. […]
Read more "Vortex (1982)"Substance use is recommended for this film. But for Legal Issues we’ve changed the statement above. Substance use is not recommended by this film. You have to admit that isn’t the usual opening credit for a movie…. This little independent from New Zealand is another odd one. But at least it is very funny. Two […]
Read more "The Peacemakers (2021)"What we have here is a classic Film Noir Private Eye drama. At least if you ignore the fact that this is a science fiction film. Now this is hardly a unique combination — Blade Runner did it back in the Eighties — and did it better than anyone else has since. However, Reminiscence sets […]
Read more "Reminiscence (2021)"“The sky above Neo-Berlin has the color of a broken television.” A city, wrapped in darkness and smoke and drenched by eternal rain. Against this dark, grey background, we see blinking lights, dingy, badly lit signs in strange languages, and flying cars. It’s like it’s the Eighties once again and we’ve wandered into the one […]
Read more "Attack of the Cyber Octopuses (2017)"
rivets on the poster 