White Lightning (1973)

After Burt Reynolds passed away, I realised there was a lot of his movies I hadn’t seen – the ones that were decent, not Rent-A-Cop or anything like that. I watched Smokey and the Bandit for the first time on Netflix and that was fun. But White Lightning (1973) I liked a lot more, which […]

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 […]

Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971)

Before 2018 ended, I finished Dario Argento’s ‘animal’ trilogy with Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971). This is a giallo thriller about a drummer in a rock band (Michael Brandon) who is blackmailed by a masked stranger for an inadvertent murder he may or may not have committed against someone following him. The hero here […]

Spirits Of The Dead (1968)

Following Lewis Rice O’Donnell’s recommendation, I watched Spirits Of The Dead (1968; Italian: Tre passi nel delirio, French: Histoires extraordinaires), a omnibus film of three stories based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe by different directors. The first starring Jane Fonda and directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim is about a debauched countess who becomes obsessed […]

Mandy (2018)

I was really primed with anticipation for Mandy (2028) and yeah, no surprises, but I loved it. Definitely a case of style over substance or that style is the substance here, but I fully bought into director Panos Cosmatos’ desire to create a “1983 A.D.” where lumberjacks, religious cults, biker gangs were all subsumed in […]