Evan Popplestone

Evan Popplestone

Cult, sci-fi, horror, thriller, noir, grindhouse, arthouse and world cinema.

Favorite films

  • Blade Runner
  • Do the Right Thing
  • Love Exposure
  • This Is Spinal Tap

Recent activity

All
  • Primal Rage

    ★★★

  • The Wizard of Oz

    ★★★★★

  • Someone to Watch Over Me

    ★★

  • Stay Tuned

    ★★★

Recent reviews

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  • Primal Rage

    Primal Rage

    ★★★

    Primal Rage is one of those 1980s Italian horror films that was shot in the United States and tries its hardest to look like an American film from the era. It was directed by Vittorio Rambaldi, the son of the famous creature FX artist Carlo Rambaldi, who previously worked on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Dune, as well as an animatronic monkey creation here. In fact, this film would be Carlo's final screen credit,…

  • The Wizard of Oz

    The Wizard of Oz

    ★★★★★

    This adaptation of L. Frank Baum's fantasy novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a perennial family favourite, and for good reason. It's a rare film that truly brings a child's imagination to life in vivid Technicolor and fantastic song. The adults, on the other hand, can appreciate the well-developed characters and surprisingly witty script.

    The tone is absolutely perfect - sweet without being saccharine, and with just enough dark menace without ever reaching the point of being too scary…

Popular reviews

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  • The Northman

    The Northman

    ★★★★★

    An ancient poem of primal brutality, written in blood, mud, water, fire and internal organs. In the howl of the dog, the peck of the crow, the black void sockets of an eyeless Björk, and in the rage-filled hearts of vengeful men.

    Violence here is not glorified - there is no true good and evil, only the choice between hating your enemies and loving your friends.

    This is what cinema is about.

  • Dune

    Dune

    ★★★★★

    "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer."

    One of the most remarkable aspects of Denis Villeneuve's adaptation (*part one) of Frank Herbert's weighty space opera is the way in which it lifts visual and storytelling touchstones from David Lynch's messy 1984 retelling... and actually does them the way they should be done. The ideas were impressively ambitious back then - but ultimately misfired because of the inadequate old FX technology, producer Dino De Laurentiis's insistence on squeezing the entire…