Grimmfest 2012 Review: THE WRONG HOUSE Is So Very Wrong, But So, So Right
For a movie about a real-estate bargain that turns out to be far too good to be true, it seems perversely appropriate you have to forgive a lot - I mean a lot - to get into The Wrong House... More »
  

Grimmfest 2012 Review: You'll Be Dozing Off Long BEFORE DAWN
Very few zombie movies are actually about the zombies. Whatever their scope and scale, these are generally stories about troubled people trying to keep on doing what they do even while the world's coming to an end. And the idea... More »
  

Grimmfest 2012 Review: DEVOURED Has Very Little Behind The Curtain
Back in my Creative Writing classes at university the lecturers would explain one way to create a fictional character was to start with one thing - a name, say - and extrapolate from there. Is it a weird name? If... More »
  

Grimmfest 2012 Review: WAKE UP AND DIE is GROUNDHOG DAY ... With Murder!
Seriously, "Groundhog Day with murder" seems like such an obvious idea it's hard to imagine some low-budget splatter production house hasn't tried it yet (correct me if I'm wrong), but Miguel Urrutia's Wake Up and Die appears to be the... More »
  

Grimmfest 2012 Review: COMEDOWN - The Slasher Movie, Once More, With Feeling
Menhaj Huda's Comedown isn't so much the morning after the night before as the moment that night when you realise the booze has run out, the pills are all gone and you're desperately trying to eke out the last... 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 »
  

LIFF 2011: THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS review
The Whisperer in Darkness is a fan film through and through - an enthusiastic celebration of a subject a core group of believers think is just awesome (classic, literary-minded horror fiction from one of the fathers of the genre). It's... More »
  

Grimm Up North 2011: THE WICKER TREE review
If you're going to mash up horror and comedy ideally your writer or director needs to have it straight what it is the audience are supposed to be laughing at. The idea of a quiet English village hiding a pathologically... 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 REVEREND review
(PLEASE NOTE: The version of The Reverend that screened at Grimm Up North 2011 was a final edit that had only been completed several days before the festival started, and it is certainly possible director Neil Jones may choose to... 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 »
  

Grimm Up North 2011: SOME GUY WHO KILLS PEOPLE review
It's not the best title, is it? Trying to sell the excellent Some Guy Who Kills People is a lot harder than it ought to be when the name makes it sound like a slacker's Film Studies final year project... More »
  

Grimm Up North 2011: HALLOWEEN 3: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982) review
Halloween 3 seems bizarre enough in 2011 before you've even started watching. A Halloween with no Michael Myers, the masked killer who became the star of the first two films - the idea Hollywood would green-light a major franchise sequel... More »
  

Grimm Up North 2011: BY DAY AND BY NIGHT review
Alejandro Molina's By Day and by Night is the kind of bittersweet little fable that only an arthouse film could come up with. The plot does hinge on a patently ridiculous idea Molina could probably have done more to ground... More »
  

Grimm Up North 2011: STALKER (2011) review
Stalker, Martin Kemp's debut as a director, is a little like watching a man make his way through a pitch-black room by feel. Best known for his starring role in The Krays, and to UK TV audiences for a long-running... More »
  

Grimm Up North 2011: URBAN EXPLORER review
Do you like watching stupid people die? Not the cheeriest introduction, maybe, but it's hard to see what else anyone could get out of Andy Fetscher's Urban Explorer. Four young people go creeping through the tunnels under Berlin, only someone's... More »
  

Grimm Up North 2011: THE DEAD ZONE (1983) review
(Better late than never - let's begin the rest of my reviews from Manchester's Grimm Up North 2011, starting with their retro screening of David Cronenberg's Steven King adaptation The Dead Zone.)It's not surprising fans of David Cronenberg gloss over... More »
  

Grimm Up North 2011: RETREAT review
Carl Tibbetts' Retreat ought to be better than it is, which is not to say it doesn't have its good points. It's a solid, well-made piece of work, an impressive debut feature and boasts a name cast contributing some memorable... More »
  
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Twitchvision: Talking STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS, MUD and THE ICEMAN

Another Twitchvision chat with Scott Laurie, this time me gushing about J.J.'s latest Star Trek film, which I unabashedly loved.Also talked about he fabbo Mud, and the less fabbo The Iceman, both with Michael Shannon doing his thing.Video embedded below.... More »

Learning from the Masters of Cinema: Henri-Georges Clouzot's THE MURDERER LIVES AT 21

While Henri-Georges Clouzot is best remembered for many of his later films, including The Wages of Fear and Diabolique, the French filmmaker's 1942 debut has gone largely unseen by Western audiences until now. The Murderer Lives at 21 (L'Assassin Habite au 21), based on the novel by Belgian author Stanislas-Andre... More »

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 »
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