This is the one for me. Easily my favourite movie of all time. I've seen it more times than I could ever count and it's really quite odd that this is the first time I've logged it on Letterboxd because that means I haven't seen this in nearly 5 years.
This is why I can never be contemptible of Spielberg, for all his schmaltziness and artistic mis-steps (although the only really unforgivable thing he's ever done was Indiana Jones and…
Having become utterly addicted to the exploitation cinema of Italy from the 1970's, with all those beautiful gialli and gritty poliziotteschi, I have naturally followed that through-line into the rip-off films of the 1980's from that part of the world. Often directed by the same luminaries of Italsploitation's golden period in the 60's and 70's, it always struck me how badly the quality of film making dropped off. Putting aside the rise of horror legends like Lucio Fulci and Dario…
Min-Collab with Jetta
Pan across lush green countryside. A group of well dressed men sit ahorse while baying German shepherds destroy the tranquillity. Camera rests upon a sinister looking palanquin of some kind. The hatch is opened, a terrified campesino emerges, clocks the savage dogs and then the cruel smile on the face of the foremost rider. Cut via the short obligatory pursuit to this man getting torn apart in the river, while the rider looks on in something close…
I'm not sure what it is with these survival narratives that sucks me in. On the face of it, it should be boring. Stories like these tend to involve a lot of monotonous suffering, but somehow for me, they are rarely tedious. Maybe there is a strange parallel to porn, in that it is a representation of a very stripped down image of existence - everything dialled down and reduced to the micro-examination of bodily function. It's your entire humanity…
I committed a bit of a faux-pas. A friend of mine said he wanted to have a movie night and he suggested Blade Runner because it's his favourite movie. I'm not going to say no to watching Blade Runner, but I suggested a Philip K Dick double feature, with Total Recall as the B movie. Problem is, I sent him an Outlook calendar invite titled "Dickfest" which triggered an alarm in his work's security software and gave his wife a…
Hooptober6 – mosQuito-thewinged-dragon-serpent #81
Rule 5: Films featuring the work of Carlo Rambaldi - second of two movies
I don't really know where to start when talking about Alien. I just think it's one of the greatest horror movies ever made - some might think it's over-rated, and that's fine because my love for this is a pretty subjective thing. I've always been a sci-fi nerd as much as a horror nerd (I'm ambinerdstrous) - so this movie just captured…
