Us (2019, Monkeypaw Productions and Blumhouse Productions) Written and directed by Jordan Peele. Music by Michael Abels. Featuring Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, and Tim Heidecker. The brilliant Jordan Peele returns to the director’s chair with another horror film. This time about a family holidaying in Santa Cruz, California … Continue reading The Two Reviews: Us and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
The Mule (2018, Imperative Entertainment, Bron Creative and Malpaso Productions) Directed by Clint Eastwood. Based on 'The Sinaloa Cartel's 90-Year-Old Drug Mule' by Sam Dolnick. Featuring Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Peña, Dianne Wiest and Andy García. Directed by, produced by and starring Clint Eastwood, The Mule is a crime drama/thriller in which … Continue reading The Two Reviews: The Mule and Velvet Buzzsaw
I have always been a fan of the slasher-horror genre. The raw and chilling, but sometimes passionate, horror that provides a continuous thrill of the chase in which you never know whether the predator or prey will win. Some slasher movies can be almost comedic but Halloween from 1978 is a quintessential horror classic that … Continue reading Forty Years of Terror: Halloween (1978) vs Halloween (2018)
If you happened to miss the films A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (released in 2014 and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour) and Under the Shadow (released in 2016 and directed by Babak Anvari), get thee a copy of both immediately and watch them. They are, by my determination at least, two of the … Continue reading Shadows of the Night: Two Progressive Iranian-based Films in the Western Mainstream
Hereditary (2018 Paramount Pictures) Directed by Ari Aster; Featuring Toni Collette, Alex Wolf, Milly Shapiro & Gabriel Byrne '...a bottle of vodka and a pillow...' This is a cliché-heavy, B-grade, supernatural horror film, which is actually more funny than scary. But it is mostly boring. How did the writer/director ever convince some decent actors (Collette … Continue reading The Two Reviews: Hereditary (2018 Ari Aster)
Vampire-themed horror movies can leave many with nightmares that last forever, but what's not to like about vampire horror? The seduction, the lust, the charm, the passion and of course, the violence and horror. The 1980s was crammed full of cult classic vampire movie feasts. The cheesiness, stereotypes and clichéd one-liners of these films make … Continue reading Vampire-fest: 80s Cult Horror at Its Best – The Lost Boys vs Fright Night
I have always been the sort of person that tries to stay away from horror movies as I get scared easily, but there is something about the classic horror movies of the 1970s and 1980s that deliver a level of terror and suspense that makes you want to sneak a peek through your covered eyes … Continue reading Classic Horror Reviews: The Shining vs The Exorcist
The Death of Stalin (2018, eOne films & Gaumont) Directed by Armando Iannucci, featuring Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Jason Isaacs, Rupert Friend, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Dermot Crowley and Jeffrey Tambor The biting political and social satire of Armando Iannucci has struck a chord with many viewers from his breakthrough with The Day Today … Continue reading The Two Reviews: The Death of Stalin and Annihilation
Australiana, noun - items relating to or characteristic of Australia. As the Australian film critic Luke Buckmaster pointed out recently, the madly popular 1980s blockbuster Crocodile Dundee not only gave the world a less than flattering impression of Australians, it was also racist, sexist and homophobic. As fun as it may have seemed when I … Continue reading A Slice of Australiana in Five Films
This is the third and last in a series of posts on the filmmaking of Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980): one of the greatest directors of all time. These posts are authored by Robin Stevens, JJ McDermott and Alan Matthews, and the idea is for each part to take a selection of Hitchcock’s films and analyze them … Continue reading Exploring Hitchcock Part 3: Don’t read this! – Vertigo and Psycho (By Alan Matthews)
