Blu-Ray Review: The Deep
The seas have long been happy hunting grounds for treasure seekers and explorers. Our maritime history and a number of wars resulted in the ocean floors becoming repositories of rich bounties for enterprising buccaneers. However, whilst there’s money to be made, there’s also dangers lurking above and below the waves. Whilst these opportunities are limited …
Open City Docs Review: Victoria
One of the most fascinating aspects of town planning is the phenomenon of ghost cities. Places which have been designed and created to be bustling metropolitan centres but which end up, due to political, economic or environmental factors, empty and largely abandoned. The most famous examples are in China, but you can find many others …
Open City Docs Review: Faith
Whether you want to class them as religions or cults, there are undoubtedly a heck of a lot of them. The fact anyone can create one, is the first sign of danger. Although, it’s almost always men who start them, and ‘coincidentally’ they usually involve some form of free love/bigamy. However, most seem to be …
Film Review: Memories of Murder
When Parasite won the Best Film at the 2020 Academy Awards, it became the first non-English language film to perform this feat. However, director Bong Joon-ho has been thrilling audiences for twenty years since his feature debut, Barking Dogs Never Bite. Snowpiercer, Okja, Mother and The Host have wowed festival audiences and indie film fans. …
Blu-ray Review: Graveyards of Honor
The Yakuza play a role in Japanese culture which can only really be compared with that of the Mafiosi in Italy. The origins of today’s crime syndicates reach back over hundreds of years, to the Edo period in Japan. However, the post-war era was fertile ground for these organisations to flourish, establishing footholds within local …
Film Review: Waiting for the Barbarians
2020 has not been a good year for the British Empire. The Black Lives Matter movement has only served to highlight the abuses, bloodshed and oppression which was integral to Britannia ruling the waves. However, merely removing symbols of our past will not magically improve the present. We need to address all aspects of our …
Fantasia Festival Review: Legally Declared Dead
Ever since the principle of insurance was conceived, there have been people willing to try and exploit the system. In America alone, the insurance industry is worth over a trillion dollars and employs almost three million people. Whilst there’s a huge workforce tasked with sales and customer service, there’s also a large number of investigators …
Fantasia Festival Review – Jesters: The Game Changers
South Korean cinema has built up a reputation, across Europe and North America, for exciting and exhilarating film-making. If you’re after a creepy child in an atmospheric horror or a madcap detective hunting down a killer, then there’s nowhere better to look. However, whilst they may not translate as easily, Korea has produced some great …
Film Review: Bulletproof
Regardless of the current political climate, being a cop in a large American city is a difficult, and often dangerous, undertaking. Whilst there’s undoubtedly a huge problem with institutional racism, it’s certainly not an easy or simple job. This has been so thrillingly documented on film by the likes of Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day and …
Fantasia Festival Review: Me and Me
There’s a tendency with filmmakers to want to tie up loose ends. Even if the story has been intentionally vague, they often eventually crack and shoehorn explanations in at the end. Where directors hold firm and, for example, leave their endings open, they can be pressured by producers or studios to dot all the I’s …