Round About Midnight (1999)

Hiroyuki Sanada is a recognisable Japanese actor from Hollywood productions like The Last Samurai and John Wick 4, always giving a sense of dignity and substance to even mainstream action cinema clearly beneath his talents (Bullet Train, Mortal Kombat remake). In previous decades, there were leading roles in Japanese cinemas throughout the 1980s onwards. Round […]

Mean Guns (1997)

“The original Mambo king… makes you want to dance…” On video store shelves, I confused the cover of Mean Guns (1997) with another direct-to-video Christopher Lambert action movie, Gun Men, though the former would have been released during the transition to DVD. Becoming more and more part of the auteurist following to director Albert Pyun, […]

The Silencers (1996)

PM Entertainment had some spare fedoras and trenchcoats, and a HR Giger jumpsuit, and decided to make a sci-fi action movie called The Silencers (1996), which feels like a 90 minute X Files episode where every 20 minutes Mulder and Scully leap in slow motion from a massive explosion, the type that turns the background […]

Beckett (2021)

I was curious about Beckett (2021) and was compelled to finally watch it on Netflix thanks to a recommendation on Letterboxd (shout-out to William Gibson’s Acronym’s Collection) and in honour of composer Riyuichi Sakamoto’s recent passing as he scored the movie with moody ambient textures and a jazzy tumble for chase scenes. Directed by Italian […]

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable (1973)

The Female Prisoner Scorpion series are a quartet of Japanese exploitation action thrillers centred around the explosive character of Nami Matsushima aka “Scorpion”, unforgettably portrayed by Meiko Kaji in an indomitable performance. Arrow Video remastered and released the movies in a box-set, and they are available to stream on Tubi – though bizarrely the second […]