War Films | 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.

Masculinity under stress: late films by Sam Peckinpah and William Friedkin

Posted on June 19, 2024June 16, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

As defeat becomes inevitable Corporal Steiner (James Coburn) knows that survival is unlikely in Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron (1977)

Two veteran directors, late in their careers, revisit their explorations of masculinity and violence in a pair of films which weren’t well-received by critics: Sam Peckinpah’s sole venture into the war movie genre Cross of Iron (1977) and William Friedkin’s wilderness thriller The Hunted (2003)

Recent releases from the BFI, part two

Posted on May 8, 2024May 8, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Mary (Natasha Richardson) dreams herself into Henry Fuseli's 1781 painting The Nightmare in Ken Russell's Gothic (1987)

A wildly varied selection of recent releases from the BFI, with Pat Jackson’s Western Approaches (1944) transforming propaganda into art via Jack Cardiff’s Technicolor photography; Roddy McDowall’s The Ballad of Tam Lin (1970) infusing folk horror with the Hollywood glamour of Ava Gardner; and Ken Russell turning the famous 1816 house party presided over by Lord Byron on the shores of Lake Geneva into a fever dream of the Romantics’ fascination with love and death in Gothic (1987)

Buddy Giovinazzo’s American Nightmares

Posted on April 3, 2024April 6, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Johann (Heino Ferch) and Rafaella (Ornella Muti) have had enough of their old friend Mickey (James Russo) in Buddy Giovinazzo's The Unscarred (2000)

Severin’s recent release of Buddy Giovinazzo’s fourth feature, The Unscarred (2000), on disk reconfirms this outsider as an intriguing auteur; a chamber piece in which the psychological games of four old friends grown increasingly darker is a taut, polished piece of work which sent me back to watch his raw first feature, Combat Shock (1986), again. As technically different as the two movies are, both reveal a filmmaker with a bleak view of the world tempered by a deep empathy for broken people.

Late winter 2023: Vinegar Syndrome and partners

Posted on April 12, 2023May 2, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Karen (Tara Chung) goes mad by the sea in Roberta Findlay's A Woman's Torment (1977)

Emerging from the depths of winter, I glance back at a motley collection of movies watched over the past few months — this batch all from Vinegar Syndrome: sleaze, horror, sex and violence, war, comedy, action, fantasy and lo-fi science fiction, plus the first feature I’ve ever seen from Tunisia.

Recent Severin viewing

Posted on March 22, 2023August 23, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Alice Campos (Florinda Bolkan) searches for her own past in Luigi Bazzoni’s Le Orme (Footprints on the Moon [1975])

It’s taken me a while to work through some of the many Severin box sets that have been piling up over the past year – the folk horror set All the Haunts Be Ours, House of Psychotic Women and the latest set of Italian movies Violent Streets: The Umberto Lenzi/Tomas Milian Collection – along with some 4K special editions of movies by Dario Argento and Alex de la Iglesia.

Lars Von Trier’s Europe Trilogy (1984-1991): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on January 18, 2023January 17, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Fisher (Michael Elphick) confronts the violence inside himself in Lars von Trier's Element of Crime (1984)

Criterion start 2023 with an excellent three-disk set of Lars von Trier’s Europe Trilogy, the three aggressively confrontational movies with which he began his career by digging into the lingering traces of Fascism which plagued the continent in the second half of the 20th Century. Impressive new transfers are given context by commentaries and seven hours of documentaries and interviews with and about von Trier, his intentions and creative process.

Brief Notes, December Part Two

Posted on December 3, 2022December 3, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

An ancient vampire is foolishly revived in Leon Klimovsky’s The Werewolf vs Vampire Woman (1971)

A few more comments on recent viewing, which includes a couple of interesting older horror movies and two overblown recent Hollywood blockbusters.

Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein (1976): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on May 25, 2022May 23, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Robert Klein (Alain Delon) takes the place of the other Klein on the transport to Auschwitz in Joseph Losey's Mr. Klein (1976)

Criterion’s new Blu-ray release of Joseph Losey’s chilling allegory of identity disintegrating under the pressure of anti-Semitism in Occupied France features a new 4K transfer from the original negative and includes three-and-a-half hours of supplements about the production and the real history in which the story is grounded.

Alex Cox’s Walker (1987): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on May 11, 2022June 9, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

William Walker (Ed Harris) sees American expansionism as a mission from God in Alex Cox's Walker (1987)

Criterion’s Blu-ray release of Alex Cox’s masterpiece Walker (1987) revives this deconstruction of America’s self-mythologizing at a time when its themes are more pertinent than ever; imperial attacks on domestic and foreign societies driven by a toxic mixture of religious self-righteousness and unfettered capitalist greed have been on the rise for decades and Walker traces the roots back to the mid-19th Century doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

Tag: War Films