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This month's Journal of the Month is The Grim Cellar, Paul W.J. Martin's excellent horror devoted blog. With a focus on horror, amongst other genres, Paul has managed to put together one of FilmJournal.net's most unique and interesting areas...
Directed by: Frank Darabont It shouldn't be a crime to acknowledge that you do one thing well - especially when you do it as well as Frank Darabont, who has built his directorial career around adapting Stephen King's stories into arguably the best iterations of the author's work. If you don't know his name, you'll probably know his films: The ...
Slate Scrawl 04-07-2008 00:15
Great monster design I thought and nice transformation as you say, plus there's a darkly amoral edge to the whole thing that I like....
Posted by paulwjm 03-07-2008 18:00
L’Homme à la tête en caoutchouc, 1901, 2m31sStar Film Catalogue Nos. 382-383 In a laboratory, a scientist mixes some fluids together in a bottle before opening the doors to an anteroom. There, he finds a table and carries it out. On it, he places a smaller stand with a tube emerging from its base. He extracts a human head from the box an...
Georges Méliès 04-07-2008 00:00
Director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi Main Cast: Etsuko Shihomi, Masashi Ishibashi, Yasuaki Kurata Territory: Japan Production Company: Toei The next Sister Street Fighter film off the Toei production line is Sister Street Fighter: Hanging By a Thread (a title that doesn’t seem to have any real relevance, incidentally). Already, you can see the f...
Heroes of the East 02-07-2008 22:33
I love ALIEN. I can live with ALIENS, think ALIEN 3 might have been a masterpiece had the studio left it alone, and... well, I kinda pretend that the fourth film never happened to be honest. But even the fourth film is a work of art compared to AVP2. The Alien franchise oddly defines how Hollywood works- the first film is, despite it's genre bo...
Musings of the Ghost Of 82 02-07-2008 17:49
Sometimes they’re cute and cuddly, like ET (or Jeff Bridges) but not all aliens are nice as this weeks viewing shows… The Thing from Another World There is much to enjoy in The Thing from Another World and then there’s James Arness’”Super Carrot”. The character interplay sparkles, although I could have done without having a woman ...
Mine Was Taller 02-07-2008 12:20
2008 | M. Night Shyamalan | 90 mins | cinema | 15 / R This review contains spoilers. While others have been lamenting the slide in quality of Shyamalan's work since his breakthrough 1999 hit The Sixth Sense, I've been quietly enjoying most of his films since then. I liked Sixth Sense and appreciated its ingenious twist, but it was the fantast...
100 Films in a Year 01-07-2008 14:43
The latest edition of online journal Senses of Cinema has several lengthy articles devoted to aspects of central and eastern European cinema, including: Sweet Movie: The Gentle Side of "Destructive Art" by Dušan Makavejev The World Tasted: Dušan Makavejev’s Sweet Movie by Lorraine Mortimer Slovak Cinema of the 1970s Revisited by Peter Hour...
Kinoblog 01-07-2008 07:03
Prehistoric Women lies somewhere beyond the critical remit. It's a shambles, the celluloid equivalent of an M5 rush hour pile-up. The acting is appalling, the directing directionless, and everything has been done on the cheap. Yet it embraces its own rubbishness so effectively that its stock in entertainment value can't help but rise. At times, I t...
The Big Whatsit 30-06-2008 06:01
No cinema visits in the past fortnight, and evenings have been dominated by Euro 2008. With any luck, normal service will now be resumed after this midsummer break. The Name of the Rose (1986) Or a palimpsest of Umberto Eco's novel. So what is a palimpsest anyway? Put simply, it's a text written on top of another text, and, appropriately enou...
Nobody Knows Anything 29-06-2008 16:54
What makes a good war film? At its best, the war movie goes beyond mere action, heroism and patriotism. It provides the opportunity to show real human drama and real human frailty under the most extreme circumstances. The small, everyday, mundane struggles between individuals, and within individuals, play against the backdrop of the larger co...
Riding the High Country 29-06-2008 01:07
Thanks Livius - it lost points on the overly long exposition for me. Nothing wrong with this in itself, but it's only when Ollie shows up that the film really cranks into gear. That said, it's very atmospheric, ticks the 'dark fairytale' quality that I like best from Hammer's Gothic horrors, and looks pretty good to boot....
Posted by Mike 03-07-2008 13:29
I suppose what you think of Aliens is determined by how much you like the first movie. Personally, I thought the Cameron sequel was great fun, possibly the best film of its type at the time, and it contained immortal lines like 'Game over, man!' As for AVP2, never seen it and never likely to either. AVP1 was more than enough for me - totally un...
Posted by Mike 02-07-2008 21:51
I think I liked this one a lot more than you did Mike. I admit I'm a bit of a sucker for werewolf films but I'd rank 'Curse' right up there with Universal's 'The Wolf Man'. I think it's one of Hammer's finest due to Ollie (like you said), the sets and the fact that they didn't overuse the monster. I also thought that Clifford Evans gave a wonderf...
Posted by Livius 02-07-2008 20:14
Yeah, it's a change of pace for them really, a slow burner that builds up in tension nice and steadily. A shame about the ending, but that's the difference between a classic and a 'just okay' I guess. Cheers Livius....
Posted by Mike 02-07-2008 16:30
I thought The Witches was kind of fun - not classic Hammer but fun all the same....
Posted by Livius 02-07-2008 16:26
Thanks John - it's really a case of doing justice to Plague, and trying not to gush too much over Andre Morell who I reckon is fantastic in this. All in all a very good film, and I might argue if someone wanted an introduction to Hammer, complete with an explanation of their production values and how to make a tiny budget look like a million dollar...
Posted by Mike 02-07-2008 16:22
Wow, I haven't seen this film since well back into the 90s. In fact, I can hardly remember anything about it. May be time for a rewatch, methinks....
Posted by A French Assassin's Grandmother 01-07-2008 12:28
Eloquently put John. I certainly don't hate Wayne but I actually believe that Hawks was better with him...e.g.Rio Bravo and Red River although The Searchers certainly tapped into a nastier Wayne which is refreshing. Very happy to have a re-think on Ford although I will still avoid "The Quiet Man"!! Quite right on Pat Garrett...it is romanticis...
Posted by Charlie Gordon 01-07-2008 09:01
I think one crucial thing you have to bear in mind with Méliès' work is that it's not so much "silent cinema" (even really basic aspects of film grammar such as close-ups or cutting to different angles within the same scene had yet to be developed) as an unusually vivid link between the cinema and 19th century variety theatre. So it makes mo...
Posted by Michael Brooke 01-07-2008 07:19
'Plague' is one of the best Hammer horrors, IMHO, and still has the capacity to scarify. George Romero eat ya heart out. Look forward to your review Mike....
Posted by John Hodson 30-06-2008 19:01
