L'Etrange 2012 Review: MANIAC Remake Doesn't Cop Out, for Better or Worse
Those worried that Franck Khalfoun and Alexandre Aja's Maniac remake was going to whitewash and water down their favorite 80s sleaze classic can rest easy. This updated, Los Angeles-set story of a disturbed man cutting off the scalps of women... More »
  

L'Etrange 2012 Review: EXCISION is a Messy Combination of Sex and Scalpels
Excision, a gory, coming-of-age horror/comedy, wears its influences on its sleeve; so much so, that you'll have to forgive me, and probably numerous other critics, for describing it as Welcome to the Dollhouse with a healthy dose of Nip/Tuck's sexualized... More »
  

L'Etrange 2012 Review: VANISHING WAVES is the Erotic Sci-Fi Drama of the Year!
Vanishing Waves is an exquisite sci-fi head trip in the vein of Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey, one which takes pleasure in ideas and exploration rather than cheap thrills. As a bonus, it's also sexier than either of those... More »
  

L'Etrange 2012 Review: THE OUTING Delivers Thrilling Mixture of Hitchcock and Brothers Grimm
Two things become immediately clear in Mathieu Seiler's suspenseful adult fairy tale, The Outing: First, that this isn't going to be your average lost-in-the-woods horror movie. From the colorful opening credits, which pay equal homage to Saul Bass and vintage... More »
  

L'Etrange 2012 Review: HENGE is Hilarious, Outrageous, Violent... And Kinda Heartwarming
I doubt that the "in sickness and in health" line of wedding vows was written with demonic, mutant transformations in mind. But, as director Hajime Ohata shows, sometimes them's the breaks. Indeed, Henge establishes its love of body horror right... More »
  

LIFF 2011: THE DIVIDE review
Xavier Gens' superb The Divide basically posits that should the bombs drop and the world get blown to radioactive splinters, the scariest thing that could happen wouldn't be finding out you were screwed. It'd be finding out that given the... More »
  

Grimm Up North 2011: THE THEATRE BIZARRE review
Horror's pretty dumb, right, when you get down to it? Subjecting ourselves to seedy vicarious thrills when if we took pleasure in the same things in real life we'd be clinically insane. Lots of people level this argument against genre... More »
  

Grimm Up North 2011: REVENGE: A LOVE STORY review
Wong Ching-Po's salacious little thriller Revenge: A Love Story is the second film from production company 852 - who previously gave us Edmond Pang's Dream Home, an ultraviolent slasher (emphasis on ultra) where Pang's trademark sly social commentary sat somewhat... More »
  

Grimm Up North 2011: THE WOMAN review
What you get out of Lucky McKee's The Woman, a piece of ultraviolent drama that's brilliant and infuriating by turns, is probably dependent on how serious you think the director and his writing partner, novelist Jack Ketchum are being. The... More »
  

ETRANGE 2011: MEAT (aka VLEES) review
Victor Nieuwenhuijs and Maartje Seyferth's bizarre, chilling little character drama Meat certainly covers all the bases. Nearly every major synonym, metaphor or other interpretation of that one word is in there somewhere. Mostly it seems to be about people who've... More »
  

ETRANGE 2011: DEAD BALL review
So is Yudai Yamaguchi's micro-budget horror-comedy Dead Ball a good film? The temptation is to say technically no... but you have to remember most people don't make the effort to watch a film where physical FX maestro Yoshihiro Nishimura is... More »
  

ETRANGE 2011: THE MILL AND THE CROSS review
Lech Majewski's The Mill and the Cross is odd. More two hours of art appreciation than an conventional film, it tells the story (or possibly a story) of the artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder and what it was that led... More »
  

ETRANGE 2011: DRIVE review
Drive is a confusing film: bear with me on this. The story's easy enough to follow - the taciturn anti-hero Driver (Ryan Gosling) breaks his vow of laissez-faire to help the mother and child who happen to be the first... More »
  

ETRANGE 2011: THE NIGHT PORTER (1974) review
(Another retro screening from L'Etrange 2011. I'm aware some don't care for the film, think it's tasteless or lacks any real depth; I was absolutely blown away, so here's a review. Feel free to laugh at my wide-eyed enthusiasm.)Liliana Cavani's... More »
  

ETRANGE 2011: A POOL WITHOUT WATER (1982) review
(Another retro screening from L'Etrange 2011, which I wanted to write a review for since I went in blind, ended up watching the whole thing and enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to.) Kôji Wakamatsu's A Pool Without... More »
  

ETRANGE 2011: COME AND SEE (1985) review
(Since this astonishing film is part of the 17th L'Estrange Film Festival's retro screenings, I'm using that as an excuse to write a review.)"And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the fourth beast say, Come and see."(Revelation)Countless... More »
  

ETRANGE 2011: THE MAN FROM NOWHERE review
Lee Jeong-Beom's blockbuster The Man From Nowhere is a film that struggles to keep two distinct target markets happy, torn on the one hand between satisfying impressionable young Koreans come to gawp at one of their brightest stars strutting his... More »
  

ETRANGE 2011: KILL LIST review
(And with Ben Wheatley's Kill List just having played at the 17th L'Estrange Film Festival in Paris, let me weigh in with a dissenting opinion.)Watching Ben Wheatley's disappointing sophomore feature Kill List feels like climbing a house someone stopped building... More »
  

ETRANGE 2011: STAKE LAND review
If Jim Mickle's brilliant Stake Land has one thing above all else to teach us it's that cliches do not matter in the slightest if the person using them knows what they're doing. Stake Land tells the story of a... More »
  

ETRANGE 2011: BOYD RICE plays DEMENTIA review
Labelling John Parker's haunting, wonderfully bizarre little movie Dementia: Daughter of Horror as a 'cult classic' is, well, kind of unfair, no? It's a weirdly stylised piece of fifties noir, part detective story, part slasher, part revenge flick that plays... More »
  
 
  Next »
Page 1 of 2
Leading Voices in Global Cinema
More »
Featured Videos
1.
Watch The International Trailer For Mark Hartley's PATRICK
2.
Watch The First Trailer For Jeunet's THE YOUNG AND PRODIGIOUS SPIVET
3.
Watch The Stellar Cannes Teaser For Jeremy Saulnier's BLUE RUIN
Featured Articles

China Beat: What did China See in IRON MAN 3?

Much has already been written, both on these pages and many others, about the landmark Hollywood-China co-production that is Marvel and DMG Entertainment's Iron Man 3. The film, directed by Shane Black, is the third solo outing for Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark, and has proved a phenomenal success around... More »

FEAR & LOATHING AT CANNES, PART 2: I'M IN LOVE WITH EVERYBODY'S GIRL

CHAPTER 4: THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANNA KARINA AND BUTT PLUGSI'm sitting outside at a small Café that my editor told me to meet him at. I'm a 10 minute walk from the Marche Du Film convention hall and I'm still waiting for my editor to arrive so he take guide... More »

CINEMA HOLOCAUST ON THE FRENCH RIVIERA, PART 1: THOSE GOD DAMN FILM BLOGGERS

MIKE'S JOURNAL. MAY 13. MORNINGI wake up sometime around five AM. My flight to France doesn't leave until five PM. I should be there for security check in sometime around 3PM. There is no reason for me to be up this early but I'm feeling anxious. I have an itch... More »

FEAR & LOATHING AT CANNES, PART 1: A MAN'S HANDSHAKE SAYS EVERYTHING

CHAPTER ONE: THE BIGGER THE SIDEBURNS, THE BIGGER THE ASSHOLE. I've hit the big time now. I've finally made it. I'm in like Flint from here on out. I'm boarding a plane to France where I'll be attending the Cannes Film Festival for the first time.No more unpaid blogging from... More »

Destroy All Monsters: Leo DiCaprio and the Myth of the Chick Flick

I have a running argument about whether or not movie box office is a zero-sum game. I tend to attack film earning potential from the "mother of two" perspective - which is that while yes, it's nice to believe that if a film is good it has a theoretically unlimited... More »
Most Popular
Follow Twitch

Never miss a thing! Headlines delivered daily.
E-mail address:

Recent Comments
More »
​