Don’t Look Now (1973)

After Nicolas Roeg’s recent passing, it was time to finally watch Don’t Look Now (1973), of which I knew the references to it in pop culture and even the ending for so long, but had never actually seen it. It’s an eerie, involving piece of work that for most of its running length functions as […]

White Lightning (1973)

After Burt Reynolds passed away, I realised there was a lot of his movies I hadn’t seen – the ones that were decent, not Rent-A-Cop or anything like that. I watched Smokey and the Bandit for the first time on Netflix and that was fun. But White Lightning (1973) I liked a lot more, which […]

The Bad Sleep Well (1960)

Unboxing DVDs that I’ve had in storage for several years, I didn’t realise I had this copy of Akira Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well (1960). So I finally watched it and it was excellent. Set in post-war Japan, it unravels the revenge plot set in motion by Nishi (Toshiro Mifune) who is climbing the ranks […]

Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971)

Before 2018 ended, I finished Dario Argento’s ‘animal’ trilogy with Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971). This is a giallo thriller about a drummer in a rock band (Michael Brandon) who is blackmailed by a masked stranger for an inadvertent murder he may or may not have committed against someone following him. The hero here […]

Mandy (2018)

I was really primed with anticipation for Mandy (2028) and yeah, no surprises, but I loved it. Definitely a case of style over substance or that style is the substance here, but I fully bought into director Panos Cosmatos’ desire to create a “1983 A.D.” where lumberjacks, religious cults, biker gangs were all subsumed in […]