Feature Essays
The Best Films of 2018
2018 was a pretty great year for feature films. I remember saying the same thing about 2017, and it's true: it really seems to me ...
REVIEW: Jane Got a Gun (2016)
Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman) lives in an isolated house with her ex-outlaw husband Bill (Noah Emmerich). He comes home badly injured and riddled with bullets: his old gang, led by John Bishop (Ewan McGregor), is coming to kill him. With the help of a former lover (Joel Edgerton) Jane prepares to defends her husband and ...
REVIEW: Massacre Gun (1967)
Kuroda (Jo Shishido) is a mid-level yakuza enforcer who has been ordered to kill his own lover. While he goes through with the murder, he tells gang boss Akazawa (Takashi Kanda) that he is leaving his employ. Akazawa, however, is not so easily turned down, and his efforts to pressure Kuroda drag in both of ...
“We’ll go for a jolly ride!” | The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (1949)
A wealthy but impulsive toad squanders his estate purchasing the latest in high-speed recreational vehicles. A cowardly school teacher is pursued through the night by a terrifying spectre. Two highly disparate stories, both based on classic works of literature, and both put together into one single animated feature film. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr ...
“As a species we’re fundamentally insane.” | The Mist (2007)
An eerie mist descends upon a quiet Maine town. Before long it is discovered that the mist is populated with nightmarish monsters, trapping a group of townspeople inside their local supermarket. Once trapped inside, however, it turns out that the biggest threat to their survival may not be the creatures in the mist at all ...
“You’re so cool, Kung Fu” | House (1977)
As with all national cinema industries, Japan has seen a variety of highs and lows. If the 1950s and the 1960s were the golden age of Japanese cinema, then the decade that followed is probably best considered the industry’s ‘dark age’. The 1970s witnessed a staggering contraction in the Japanese film industry: audiences dwindled away, ...
“Filigree, apogee, pedigree, perigee!” | Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)
It is the year 1940. An apprentice witch-in-training attempts to master a spell that will enable her to animate soldiers’ uniforms and send an unstoppable magical army into Nazi Germany. Her quest to discover the correct words for the spell take her from rural England to London and back, with a side-trip to an animated ...
“The only winning move” | WarGames (1983)
Teenager David Lightman, obsessed with his new personal computer, uses it to hack into a telephone network and access pre-release videogames. He has made a mistake. He has not hacked into a videogames developer but rather into NORAD – North American Aerospace Defense Command. While David believes he is playing a war game a powerful ...
