The Mission (1999)

Johnnie To is someone whose movies I’ve wanted to dig into more, with him and his company Milky Way having an international reputation for Hong Kong action cinema. Though To has a prolific and diverse output of genres, people tend to talk most about his crime movies, usually about cops and triads. I’ve seen a […]

A Better Tomorrow (1986)

The iconic image from A Better Tomorrow (1986) is Chow Yun-Fat as the triad gangster Mark wearing dark sunglasses and lighting a cigarette with a flaming bank note, a counterfeit note incidentally. Lesser known is the sight of Yun-Fat wearing a pilly sweater with a pattern of beaded colours in a night club and still […]

Scanners III: The Takeover (1991)

When they came to the third entry in the Scanners franchise – based on David Croenenberg’s original film where a strain of people in Canada are born with psychic powers due to government experimentation in drugs given to expectant mothers – they were really having fun with the possibilities here: What if a pigeon annoyed […]

Scanners II: The New Order (1991)

A new acting category in the Oscars should be the Best Scanners Acting Award, actors undertaking the challenge to either be the one who is scanning (using their mind to express psychic power) or who is being scanned (getting your mind overpowered by an invisible force). Both offer the chance for an actor to give […]

Let The Corpses Tan (2017)

A leather glove tightened. Sweat dripping down a lined face. The snap of a firearm being loaded. The glow emanating from a gold bar. Let The Corpses Tan (2017; Laissez bronzer les cadavres) luxuriates in these details, fetishing them in close up and heightened sound design. As filmmakers, Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani have a […]