Where to begin… I suppose it might help to note that this hugely ambitious Korean film, loaded with weird special effects and dizzying action sequences, failed to attract a huge audience at the time, and left viewers wildly divided between those who adored it and those who hated the very ground it treads upon. Yeah, […]
Read more "Sungnyangpali sonyeoui jaerim [Resurrection of the Little Match Girl] (2002)"‘”Sinister Flesh” was the final motion picture supervised by the legendary showman and impresario Maxwell DeMille. Although photographed in 1974, it was released as a silent film. DeMille maintained the belief that motion pictures should not talk… Unfortunately the movie going public did not share his views and the film was soon forgotten. Only recently […]
Read more "Sinister Flesh (1976)"(aka, Message from Outer Space, Space Ninja) One of the first cloned copies of Star Wars which came out after the release of the George Lucas classic was Message from Outer Space, a strange and colorful Japanese film whose most memorable element was its spaceship in the form of a square-rigged sailing vessel, complete with […]
Read more "Swords of the Space Ark (1981)"My first thought when I saw the opening of this movie was that The Son of Dr. Jekyll must have been the sequel to a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Louis Hayward. Well, that isn’t the case. Nor does Columbia Pictures appear to have made such a film without Hayward, prior to […]
Read more "The Son of Dr. Jekyll (1951)"I’ve always loved animated science fiction films, particularly those which are set in outer space. Unfortunately, they are quite rare. Well, outside the world of Japanese anime, that is. Very few were made in the English-speaking world, but for some reason a number of quite interesting examples came out of Europe. Or it might be […]
Read more "Fiul Stelelor [The Son of the Stars] (1985)"This one wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Or maybe it was. I’m not sure. After all, I’ve been waiting for it a long time. It was announced, supposedly due to be released, delayed, delayed again, and finally came out — in Japan. More waiting. What I expected, when it was first announced, was a […]
Read more "Shin Ultraman (2022)"I have to confess that if this were an American film, I’d probably have guessed that Le navire étoile had been made in the Fifties. And yes, if you’d told me it was a TV movie, I would still have thought it came from the Fifties. After all, we are talking about a film in […]
Read more "Le navire étoile [The Spaceship] (1962)"[Literal Translation: If All the Women in the World… (Operation Paradise)] We’ve heard that art imitates life. And a parody is, of course based on the original work. But sometimes it works the other way. Take Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, for example: it’s a lighthearted parody of the James Bond films, right? […]
Read more "Se tutte le donne del mondo… (Operazione Paradiso) [Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die] (1966)"I had a sudden epiphany the other day and realized the correct term for one of Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson’s films is a “try-to-wrap-your-head-around-this-one.” It isn’t anything as simple as what is called the “mind (*Bleep*)”: after all, many of the films generally dumped in that category do not actually make sense as so […]
Read more "Something in the Dirt (2022)"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)"
rivets on the poster 