Spartan (2004)

Spartan (2004) has a Tom Clancy type espionage potboiler story: The President’s Daughter Is Missing. Yet it’s another example in good storytelling not being about the what, but the how – it’s all given purpose and style through director-writer David Mamet’s distinct way with dialogue and plotting. Even in comparison to other spy thrillers at […]

Curse Of The Demon (1957)

“It’s in the trees! It’s coming!” A familiar sample from the start of Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds Of Love’. Where it’s taken from is the British horror movie, Curse Of The Demon (1957) also known as Night Of The Demon, another entry in Danny Peary’s Cult Movies 2 that I’d never seen. I remember seeing the […]

Alphabet City (1984)

Streetlights that beam like diffused moons. Tenement buildings cast in a purple haze. Wet streets where a Trans Am speeds through the night, blinding the camera with its headlights. All to the synth-funk sounds of Nile Rogers composing the score. These are some of the aesthetic delights of Alphabet City (1984), a neo-noir crime drama […]

A Week’s Vacation (1980)

Sunday afternoon dread when the working week beckons. This is a feeling that A Week’s Vacation (1980; aka A Week Of Holidays aka Une semaine de vacances) is about, yet it also works as a soothing balm for such an emotion. The second film I’ve watched by French director Bertrand Tavernier, A Week’s Vacation is […]

The Big Racket (1976)

If you start watching Poliziotteschi from the 1970s, or Eurocrime movies where they attempt to go further than Dirty Harry and Death Wish, there’s always going to be some heinous shit in there in terms of the violence and sleaziness. The Big Racket (1976; Il Grande Racket) has that and more, but it is one […]