If the world doesn't end, or at least if the United States doesn't continue its metamorphosis into Panem next year, then cinematically 2023 might be remembered as the year of the disappointing franchise entry. This year I've been let down by Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, underwhelmed by Fast X and while it was by no means bad, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was a big step down from its predecessor. There's also been a bunch…
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Pulgasari 1985
Pulgasari is probably the most widely known North Korean film, which I admit might not be saying much, that's probably like talking about Moldova's most famous pop act, but here we are. The story of its making, whereby agents of Kim Jong-il kidnapped Shin Sang-ok, a famous South Korean film director and imprisoned him and his wife in a re-education camp for several years before forcing him at literal gunpoint to make movies for the state before they finally escaped…
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Ricco 1973
Last week I was discussing nepotism when it came to the career of Peter Hyams' son, but acting "dynasties" are far more common than directing ones. So, ladies and gentlemen, may we present, a lifetime achievement for a career on the B-list: Christopher Mitchum. That's right, the offspring of the legendary Robert Mitchum, who on the basis of this inherited little of his father's talent. He did get a number of chances to justify a place in the industry, being…
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High Plains Drifter 1973
Clint Eastwood's second directorial effort and first western, is a most unusual western, being far closer to a horror movie, and that's where the controversy started and has never really ended. Eastwood was inspired by the spaghetti westerns he'd starred in over in Europe, just as they had been inspired by the classic American westerns of John Ford and others. However when John Wayne spoke out against this new direction in what was to him more than just a movie…
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The Batman 2022
Like most non-hardcore fans my response when this film was announced was to wonder aloud in strongly expressed terms whether we needed yet another Batman film. Especially given we just wrapped up the previous iteration of this character last year, and since Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises hit cinemas in July 2012, we're now on our third different caped crusader in less than a decade. Still, as with almost everything in life it's about quality rather than quantity, and…
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Zerograd 1988
No one seriously predicted the Soviet Union would ever collapse the way it did. Sure, there was hope from democratic and/or nationalist activists inside the USSR as well as in those nominally independent states that were still in effect ruled by the Kremlin through the Warsaw Pact just as there was from the USSR's geopolitical foes without, but these hopes were tempered by an acceptance that nothing was likely to change. That is to say hardly anyone in 1988 would…
