Fantasia Review: Broadcast Signal Intrusion
Mystery is one of the most powerful and compelling elements within genre cinema. The ability to keep your audience, and lead, in the dark can make for an enthralling viewing experience. There have been some great examples of this being done well, including Pulse, White Noise, In the Mouth of Madness, Ringu, The Blair Witch …
Blu-Ray Review: The Psychic
Lucio Fulci made a wide range of films, including several comedies and Spaghetti Westerns, but it’s his work in giallo and horror that established the Italian’s reputation and for which he’s best known today. During the 1970s and 1980s he made a number of cult films, including City of the Living Dead, Don’t Torture a …
Film Review: Materna
Whilst tourists flock from around the world to visit New York, living in the Big Apple doesn’t necessarily have the same shine. Major cities might have lots going on but they can also be incredibly lonely places. Isolating and anxiety-inducing. Never a peaceful moment. Everyone has their own unique story and personal history, but to …
Fantasia Review: Kratt
In the same way that animated films are not just for children, horror movies aren’t necessarily the sole purview of adults. Like thousands, if not millions, of other teenagers, I grew up secretly watching the likes of The Evil Dead, Hellraiser and Cujo. Until the former got stuck in the video player anyway. However, there …
Film Review: Night Drive
It takes a certain kind of person to become a taxi driver, especially in a modern world of apps and ratings. You need the patience of a saint to listen to all your customers talk endlessly about themselves or complain about the most unreasonable thing. Then there’s the same questions, over and over and over …
Fantasia Review: Alien On Stage
I suspect no one in the audience to see a new science fiction film on 22 June 1979 will ever forget that night. Alien tore up the rule book and completely redefined what the genre could be. Ridley Scott’s film remains on of the greatest journeys into space and still inspires writers, filmmakers and artists …
Fantasia Review: Strawberry Mansion
While filmmakers may be constrained by finances or restricted by the availably of technology, the limits of the human imagination are almost boundless. Genre cinema provides a perfect safe space for experimentation and innovation. It’s unique in that way because by the very nature of science fiction, anything and everything is possible. This is most …
Blu-ray Review: Blow Out
While John Travolta may still be best-known for roles in Saturday Night Fever and Grease back in the 1970s, his career underwent an unlikely transformation less than two decades later. Largely thanks to Quentin Tarantino casting him in Pulp Fiction, he found himself being offered a number of more action orientated parts. However, this didn’t …
Fantasia International Film Festival 2021 Preview
Now in its 25th year, Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival continues to push boundaries by showcasing the best in new international genre cinema since its inception. It’s a festival which just goes from strength to strength. With a commitment to diversity and screening challenging ground-breaking cinema from Canada and around the world, it’s one of …
Film Review: Settlers
We live in a time when the colonisation of the stars is closer than it has ever been before. Whilst our probes delve deeper, both in terms of distance and detail, billionaires race against one another to be the first to monetise space. All the science points to the fact that the Earth is rapidly …