Knife + Heart (2018)

I was so keen to see Knife + Heart (2018; Un couteau dans le coeur), a queer take on the giallo genre, when it showed at the French Film Festival a few years back. I missed it at cinemas and was meaning to catch up with it – thank the neon-lit heavens for Mubi keeping […]

Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

I love neo-noir as a genre, so there’s only a few I haven’t seen in the recent Criterion Channel ‘Neo-Noir’ collection. So that’s why I watched Farewell, My Lovely (1975), which is a more traditional take on the film noir style with Robert Mitchum playing Raymond Chandler’s character of private detective Phillip Marlowe. I think […]

Live Wire (1992)

As an action movie fan, sometimes you just want the cliches delivered big and loud. Overcome with an impulse to explore the pre-Bond career of Pierce Brosnan, I set the fuse on Live Wire (1992), which was a movie that felt like it was always shown on late night television or advertised in a DVD […]

Nightmare Alley (1947)

All I really knew about Nightmare Alley (1947) was that it was a classic film noir, it’s currently being remade by Guillermo Del Toro and it’s another film I’d not seen that was covered in Danny Peary’s Cult Movies 2. That, and it had something to do with carny life. This is definitely a case […]

Redbelt (2008)

I love Redbelt (2008) in spite of myself. Writer-director David Mamet has a way with words, but despite all his pretensions, he’s in love with macho bullshit as any other blockbuster action type. The movie is set in the world of Mixed Martial Arts competitions and has an eclectic cast that mixes Mamet regulars like […]