Scream For Help (1984)

Somewhere between a live action Disney movie from the 1970s (Candleshoe? I’ve never seen it) and Last House On The Left. Douglas Sirkian suburban New England with big houses and fall leaves, tainted with a strain of scuzziness. Disreputable pig Michael Winner has always been to my knowledge a god amongst hacks who employed his […]

Chess Of The Wind (1976)

The Iranian film, Chess Of The Wind (1976) is initially reminiscent of a Anton Chekov short story, as it observes the fall-out from a matriarch’s death and the remaining family members in the one house, circling around the prospect of her inheritance. The daughter Lady Aghdas (Fakhri Khorvash) is in a wooden wheelchair, looks pale […]

The Plot Against Harry (1971)

I love a movie where an operator makes the rounds. Our protagonist moves around their world, connecting with other characters and settings, each a mini-world of their own. Each stop along their circuit is another insight, another layer into our main character. The Plot Against Harry (1971) is about a Jewish low-level criminal named Harry […]

Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers (1988)

The poster of Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers (1988) makes me think of seeing it in video store magazines, or seeing it in VHS tape sales in the centre of a strip mall. Being a kid, scared of horror movies but kind of curious, and trying to understand the lore of “Michael Myers […]

Hamlet (1948)

Watching Grand Theft Hamlet this year made me realise that I’d never watched an adaptation of Hamlet. Obviously being one of the big William Shakespeare plays, I know it through pop culture, the famous lines, the references and parodies (thinking of Schwarzenegger doing Hamlet in the parody dream sequence from Last Action Hero). I wanted […]