Recent theatrical viewing has included some very dark comedies and fantasies, but the real horrors were supplied by the faceless corporate types who have transformed movie going into an unpleasant ordeal.
Recent theatrical viewing
Author: Kenneth George Godwin
The alpha and omega of Walter Hill
Like many filmmakers of his generation, Walter Hill began his career with strong, individualistic work, but somehow eventually drifted into aimlessness. His directorial debut, Hard Times (1975), still holds up, but his most recent film, The Assignment (2016), is transgressive but unfocused.
Recent viewing: March-April 2018, Part Two
More eclectic recent viewing, from 1970s detective noir to an Italian anthology from the ’60s to Japanese horror and classic ’50s sci-fi.
Recent viewing: March-April 2018
A round-up of recent reviewing across multiple genres – western, black comedy, musical, animation, road movie.
King Hu’s Legend of the Mountain (1979)
A new digital restoration of King Hu’s epic period ghost story Legend of the Mountain (1979) from Masters of Cinema reveals this languid masterpiece in all its pictorial glory; a stunning dream of a movie.
Pizza, beer and revenge
On a recent evening, my friend Steve and I washed down a Death Wish triple bill with an excess of pizza and beer … I know it wasn’t healthy, but we had a good time.
Miscellaneous viewing – March 2018
Recent viewing includes a range of genre movies, from bloated big-budget international productions to scrappy low-budget independents, from large-scale fantasies to lo-fi science fiction, from horror remakes and sequels … all available on Blu-ray.
John Murray Anderson’s King of Jazz (1930): Criterion Blu-ray review
The ambitious and very expensive early sound-era musical King of Jazz, featuring Paul Whiteman and his band, gets a spectacular restoration which makes the most of the original two-strip Technicolor process on Criterion’s extras-packed Blu-ray.
Volker Schlöndorff’s Baal (1970): Criterion Blu-ray review
A critical, but long-suppressed film from the New German Cinema, Volker Schlöndorff’s adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s first play Baal (1970) gets an impressive release on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection. This aggressively unsettling film is packaged with an excellent selection of contextual supplements.
Rhyming Pairs
Recent viewing has included three pairs of movies – two Anime features from 2016 (In This Corner of the World and Your Name), two thrillers from 1967 and 1972 by English directors (Point Blank and Pulp), and a pair of gritty horror-tinged thrillers from 1979 and 1981 which transcend their exploitation roots (The Driller Killer and Ms. 45).
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