Chess Of The Wind (1976)

The Iranian film, Chess Of The Wind (1976) is initially reminiscent of a Anton Chekov short story, as it observes the fall-out from a matriarch’s death and the remaining family members in the one house, circling around the prospect of her inheritance. The daughter Lady Aghdas (Fakhri Khorvash) is in a wooden wheelchair, looks pale […]

Yokohama BJ Blues (1982)

Only after I finished watching Yokohama BJ Blues (1982) did I realise that the lead actor, Yusaku Matsuda, played the role of Sato the villain in the Michael Douglas action flick, Black Rain. I knew Matsuda was a Japanese movie star and was known for action films himself in the 1970s, and yet I just didn’t connect him […]

Alison’s Birthday (1981)

Alison’s Birthday (1981) lets you know it’s an Australian horror story through the shot of a Cold Chisel album on the floor when a seance goes haywire. At age 16, Alison (Joanne Samuel from Mad Max) is mucking around with a ouija board with a couple of school friends, and receives a warning from the […]

Creepy (2016)

There’s a masterclass sequence in Creepy (2016) that shows off Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s command with visually increasing uneasiness. A retired detective now a college professor Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima from Drive My Car) is working with his former partner Nogami (Masahiro Higashide) on a cold case, a missing family who disappeared five years ago. Within the university […]

The Whip And The Body (1963)

When a film communicates two emotions happening across a character’s face, all in the one shot, the magic trick of that. In the Mario Bava directed film, The Whip and The Body (1963), there’s a tremendous close-up of the character of Nevenka (Dahlia Lavi), walking down a darkened castle hallway, approaching a door where she […]