Zeros And Ones (2021)

I wonder what viewers not familiar with director Abel Ferrara’s work would make of Zeros And Ones (2021). “From the director of King Of New York and Bad Lieutenant” is advertised in marketing and trailers, but this film has more in common with his later works like New Rose Hotel, Mary and 4:44 Last Day […]

Body Snatchers (1993)

Merging my horror movie viewing in the lead up to Halloween with my on-going retrospective of director Abel Ferrara’s filmography this year, I thought I would revisit Body Snatchers (1993), his sci-fi horror film for Warner Brothers. If it wasn’t for the later box office bomb of the Nicole Kidman starring The Invasion, this was […]

The Funeral (1996)

Continuing my journey through the filmography of director Abel Ferrara, it was time to dust off the DVD and revisit one of my favourite Christopher Walken performances in The Funeral (1996). Set in the 1930s, the film begins with one of its characters watching a Humphrey Bogart movie. From that point, The Funeral feels like […]

China Girl (1987)

I knew going in that this was director Abel Ferrara’s version of Romeo and Juliet. But China Girl (1987) feels more like an updated West Side Story. There’s a MTV energy in this night-time, neon-lit, wet-sidewalked vision of New York with young gangs clattering down darkened alleyways, climbing up chain-linked fences. At one point, a […]

Fear City (1984)

I was hooked on Fear City’s (1984) opening credits with its lurid red-coloured titles, New York neon, and strip club montage, all pumping to Joe Delia and David Johansen’s song ‘New York Doll.’ Abel Ferrara directed this film, which feels like a 1940s film noir melodrama but coated in Times Square Eighties Sleaze. Filtering the […]