Barry Shear’s Across 110th Street (1972) is the sort of film for which the word ‘muscular’ seems intended. Produced in 1973 and released to American cinemas a year later, it is an inspired crime film that draws on multiple influences of its … Continue reading REVIEW: Across 110th Street (1972)
Sogo Ishii, more recently professionally credited as Gakuryū Ishii, is a pivotal figure in Japanese cinema, but until very recently a lack of international distribution has kept him out of the limelight beyond his own country. He is a pioneer … Continue reading REVIEW: Dead End Run (2003)
A disaffected civil servant in late middle-age (Takashi Shimura) learns that he has terminal cancer and a few months left to live. After the initial shock and panic wears off, he sets out in a last-ditch attempt to find a … Continue reading REVIEW: Ikiru (1952)
God help me, it is like I have opened Pandora’s box, and all of the Jean-Claude Van Damme action films have started pouring out into my life. I first encountered Van Damme’s work when attending junior high school. At a … Continue reading REVIEW: The Order (2001)
The Jackass movies – there have been four in all of the main series – are probably the most review-proof films one can imagine. The bottom line: you are either going to find them funny, or you won’t. Each film represents a … Continue reading REVIEW: Jackass Forever (2022)
I have written in the past about how so many silent features have been lost from cinema’s early years, either being lost in accidental fires – nitrate film is ridiculously flammable, sometimes explosively so – or simply not perceived to … Continue reading REVIEW: Apart from You (1933)
In Nicholas Hytner’s drama Center Stage, an ensemble of young dancers join the prestigious American Ballet Academy in New York – but only a select few will progress beyond their first year. The academy itself is entirely fictional, but Hytner … Continue reading REVIEW: Center Stage (2000)
It has long become clear that Marvel Studios’ specific brand of shared universe feature films really work under their own rules. Fans of the comic book-inspired franchise may have bristled when Martin Scorsese famously noted ‘that’s not cinema’, but to … Continue reading REVIEW: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper will forever be remembered for their 1933 monster classic King Kong, but it was not the only film they made together. In 1935 they co-directed the RKO Pictures Roman epic The Last Days of … Continue reading REVIEW: The Last Days of Pompeii (1935)
Bear with me. Knock Off is an action vehicle for Jean-Claude Van Damme, released in 1998 when his Hollywood career had arguably peaked and his films were on a rapid one-way highway to the video store. It was not a success in … Continue reading REVIEW: Knock Off (1998)
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