Stormy Monday (1988)

Acquired this from Arrow Video on Blu-Ray a whim and I really dug it. Stormy Monday (1988) is only 95 minutes long but it moves slow, luxuriating in the neo-noir atmosphere it creates in Newcastle, England. Wet streets, neon signs and dime-store archetypes. Oh, and the quartet of lead actors are all looking incredibly foxy, […]

Doberman Cop (1977)

Aside from being referenced in True Romance and starring in Kill Bill Vol. 1, I’d not actually seen any Sonny Chiba films. So I took a chance on Doberman Cop (1977; Doberman Deka), which is based on a manga, and has Chiba playing a cop from Okinawa, trying to solve the murder of a young […]

The Villainess (2017)

The South Korean action film The Villainess (2017; Ak Nyeo) starts out high octane with a POV action sequence that’s like a video game (POV action doesn’t really do it for me, I think for action to be gripping you need to see the protagonist in the action) but once the camera whips around to […]

Youth Of The Beast (1963)

Always great when a film from an older decade feels contemporary in its energy. Youth Of The Beast (1963; Yajū no seishun) is very snappy and vibrant, a Yazuka gangster movie about a mysterious stranger Joe (Joe Shishido – who I only discovered now had cheek implants to help his career and thus his very […]

Wheelman (2017)

If you couldn’t get enough of films about get away drivers, there’s a Netflix Original called Wheelman (2017) starring Frank Grillo. Even though it looks like Drive and feels like an 80s Michael Mann thing, it’s more like Locke in that you are stuck in a car, watching an actor negotiate over the phone while […]