Shock Corridor (1963)

Diving deeper into the world of director Samuel Fuller, I finally watched Shock Corridor (1963), which I remember Martin Scorsese playing clips of in his Personal Journey Through American Cinema docu-series (now on Kanopy, which this film is available to stream too). Shot over ten days in one location, this low budget thriller follows journalist […]

Gemini (2017)

I’ve liked director Aaron Katz ever since a friend loaned me DVDs of his early ‘mumblecore’ films Dance Party USA and Quiet City. With Gemini (2017), Katz still retains intimacy between characters and small stakes stories but has more cinematic, smoother visual style now. Much like an earlier film he did, Cold Weather, Gemini is […]

Hotel Artemis (2018)

Hotel Artemis (2018) was better than I expected. Call it the lowered expectations of a B movie. John Wick comparisons abounded when it came out (as it is about a secret hospital for criminals) but there’s a bit of Blade Runner in there too. All the main action happens in the climax, and it’s mainly […]

The Bad Sleep Well (1960)

Unboxing DVDs that I’ve had in storage for several years, I didn’t realise I had this copy of Akira Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well (1960). So I finally watched it and it was excellent. Set in post-war Japan, it unravels the revenge plot set in motion by Nishi (Toshiro Mifune) who is climbing the ranks […]

The Fourth Man (1983)

I realised I’d never seen any pre-Hollywood Paul Verhoeven Dutch movies so I sat down with The Fourth Man (1983), which is a pretty nutty erotic thriller in the post-Hitchcock mould. Better known to me as the go-to actor for European dodgy guys in American movies like No Mercy and The Fugitive, Jeroen Krabbé plays […]