Osamu Tezuka is probably as close to Walt Disney as anyone in Japan will ever be. He started out by redefining Manga and then jumpstarted the Japanese anime market with Astroboy. In his early work, he told surprisingly dark stories for younger readers featuring a running cast of familiar characters, but later moved to more […]
Read more "Fumoon (1980)"There are a lot of obscure — and often borderline — science fiction films from before the 1950s I still haven’t gotten around to watching. Sometimes it’s because they can be very hard to find, and sometimes it is just because I decided to watch something else instead. But if there’s anything that will get […]
Read more "Le monde tremblera [The World Will Tremble] (1939)"(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 found this one rather odd. It is already a somewhat rarer offering as it was made by Paramount. They did put out quite a few horror films during the Thirties and Forties, but were never as prolific as Universal — although several of their films are notable, like Murders at the Zoo, The Uninvited […]
Read more "The Monster and the Girl (1941)"Film — as an Avant Garde art form? That is essentially what the director, Marcel L’Herbier, is doing here. This film was made at the height of the Paris Avant Garde of the Twenties, with a handful of Marcel’s friends from the world of art providing the mise en scène — including Fernand Leger, René […]
Read more "L’inhumaine [The Inhuman Woman] (1924)"(Warning: Spoilers Ahead!) Not long ago, I noted that the mad scientist film seems to have disappeared. It never was exactly a realistic sort of concept, and as modern film has skewed away from non-realistic styles like expressionism and surrealism, it seems further and further out of place. But that didn’t stop Ridley Scott. Curiously, […]
Read more "Alien: Covenant (2017)"I like this one. Okay, it’s got all the problems you can expect from a cheap Italian SF film. And all the problems you expect from a cheap Italian Sword and Sandal epic. A big strong guy fights everyone in sight. It’s badly dubbed. It’s a tad bit slow. And pretentious. But there’s just something about […]
Read more "The Giant of Metropolis [Il gigante di Metropolis] (1961)"(Warning: Spoilers ahead!) And once again we have another Chinese tomb raider movie, in full Indiana Jones mode, with a decidedly science fictional edge to it – which, yes, is much like last year’s Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe and the highly successful Mojin. As I noted in my review of that film, our neat categories of […]
Read more "Time Raiders [Wu Xie Xiao Ge] (2016)"Honorable Mention: It might seem strange to find a wacky Chanbara fantasy epic here, one in which the hero had his body stolen at birth and is now trying to track down the 48 demons responsible, so he can kill them and get his organs back. And, I should note that it makes no bones […]
Read more "Dororo (2007)"I have to confess that I’ve never quite “got” the musical. It seems an entirely artificial notion, whether on stage or on film (and, as Nacho Vigalondo’s Oscar winning short 7:35 in the Morning reminds us, more than a little creepy if people really did burst into song and dance numbers without warning). But that doesn’t change […]
Read more "Just Imagine (1930)"
rivets on the poster 