Review | Cagey Films

A zombie romance, Nazis vs vampire, and sex and death in a Manhattan highrise from Vinegar Syndrome

Posted on March 5, 2025March 2, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

With the end of my Vinegar Syndrome subscription, I’ll be getting a lot fewer disks from them this year, but there are still a few leftovers from last year to consider – I won’t miss things like Phillip Noyce’s Sliver (1993), but without the subscription I might never have seen Fred Burnley’s romantic-horror oddity Neither the Sea Nor the Sand (1972). Only a brand-new 4K restoration of Michael Mann’s flawed second feature, The Keep (1943), gives me a twinge of regret. Still, although I’ll have to be much more judicious about ordering without the subscription, hopefully there’ll be other interesting releases like this in the future.

Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on February 19, 2025February 18, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

The androgyny of former rock star Turner (Mick Jagger) fuels the gender fluidity of Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970)

Performance (1970), co-directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, is one of the key films to emerge from Britain towards the end of the 1960s, a turbulent decade during which the post-war order was challenged by a generation seeking to redefine society; the film’s radical style – with disorienting editing and a rejection of conventional linear narrative – both reflected and embodied the chaos in a story which deconstructed class, sexuality and individual identity in a welter of violence clashing with art and music. More than fifty years later, the film seems fresher and more pertinent than ever.

More folk horror, old and new

Posted on February 12, 2025February 11, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Maura O’Donnell (Mary Ryan) can see beyond the material world in Robert Wynne-Simmons' The Outcasts (1982)

Three recent releases from England explore the survival into the modern world of ancient mystical forces, illustrating different aspects of folk horror. In Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre (2023) a pagan entity brings tragedy to a family; in Robert Wynne-Simmons’ The Outcasts (1982), villagers in 19th Century Ireland believe a farm girl is a witch: and in Peter Sasdy’s The Stone Tape (1972), scripted by Nigel Kneale, a research team believe they’ve found the mechanism behind hauntings.

A world of horror from Arrow and Severin

Posted on February 5, 2025February 5, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Koji Shiraishi’s Noroi: The Curse (2005)

Two recent box sets – Arrow’s J-Horror Rising and Severin’s All the Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 – provide a dizzying range of horror and fantasy movies from multiple cultures and cinematic traditions. Each set includes a range of extras which illuminate not only the cultural differences but also similarities in theme and emotional impact displayed by these movies.

Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language (2024)

Posted on February 1, 2025February 18, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language (2024) is a delightfully witty comedy of intertwined cultures, a blend of Winnipeg and Tehran, sparking surprising moments of recognition which affirm a shared humanity. Formally inventive, its layered comedy gathers a deepening emotional resonance as its non-linear narrative gradually brings a disparate collection of characters together in a surprisingly moving final act. One of the finest films ever made in Winnipeg.

New limited editions from Second Sight, part two

Posted on January 29, 2025January 29, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

The arrogance of European invaders isn't enough to protect against the natural fury of the invaded land in Grant Harvey's Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004)

Four new limited edition releases from Second Sight gave me a reason to revisit and to some degree re-evaluate movies I was quite familiar with. While my opinions may not have changed radically, each set did give me a new appreciation for the filmmakers’ work, most particularly in the case of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s influential The Blair Witch Project (1999). The care and attention the company lavish on genre films – here, in addition to Blair Witch, the Ginger Snaps Trilogy (2000-04), Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor (2020) and Ti West’s The Sacrament (2013) – is exemplary.

New limited editions from Second Sight, part one

Posted on January 15, 2025January 14, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Patrick Stewart plays an atypically sinister role as the leader of neo-Nazis in Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room (2015)

Two recent limited editions from Second Sight approach horror from very different angles – classic Hammer Gothic in Terence Fisher’s Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974), and contemporary Right-wing violence in Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room (2015).

Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore (1973): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on January 8, 2025January 7, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) sees yet another woman to pursue in Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore (1973)

Criterion’s new release presents a stunning restoration of Jean Eustache’s intimate epic The Mother and the Whore (1973), a bleak epitaph for the failed promise of social change which climaxed and crashed with the May 1968 uprising in Paris: a few years later, the film’s characters are adrift and trying to rebuild a sense of themselves in a society which has rejected them and their dreams.

Fellini’s 8½ (1963): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on December 25, 2024December 24, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Following the international success of La dolce vita (1960), Federico Fellini faced a crisis of confidence fuelled by the expectations of producers, critics and audiences waiting to see what he would do next; plunging into that uncertainty he transformed creative paralysis into the defining film of his career, an exuberant, prodigiously inventive fantasia which reinvented him as an artist. Throwing off the last traces of Italian Neorealism, in 8½ he embraced the messy chaos of life which became his enduring theme in all the films which followed. Criterion’s 4K restoration once more makes the film fresh and vital.

The 5th Hong Kong International Film Festival, part ten

Posted on December 21, 2024December 16, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Greece's past and present clash in complex ways in Theodoros Angelopoulos' Alexander the Great (1980)

Part eight of my review of what I saw at the Fifth Hong Kong International Film Festival covers my introduction to the great Greek filmmaker Theodoros Angelopoulos, who addresses the fraught political history of 20th Century Greece in four thematically rich and visually stunning features made between 1972 and 1980.

Category: Review