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October 23, 2021
Gorod Zero: Hidden Soviet Era Gem
Michael Palin enters a banal, bureaucratic looking office where sits John Cleese behind a desk.Palin: Is this the right room for an argument?Cleese: I’ve told […]
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October 23, 2021
Favorite Scenes №18: Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable
In 1973, Shunya Itō released Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable, his third installment in the Scorpion series. The opening of this movie is the most badass […]
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October 23, 2021
Damiano’s Pornographic Hamlet
Luca Damiano’s pornographic retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet strays slightly from the plot of the original but there is an effort to retain the wit and meter of […]
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October 23, 2021
Brace Yourself For Hanuman vs. 7 Ultraman
Hanuman vs. Seven Ultraman has to be the most bizarre mixture of sacred and profane, I’ve ever seen. A Western equivalent might be something like Jesus vs. […]
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Favorite Scenes №16: Poltergeist
Tobe Hooper made Poltergeist in 1982. It’s an uneven film that is more entertaining than it is artful, but the choice to cast Zelda Rubinstein as the […]
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October 23, 2021
The Crimson Bat, Blind Swordswoman Series
The Crimson Bat Series is based on a manga character created by Teruo Tanashita. There are four films in all. The first two were directed […]
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October 23, 2021
Watari, the Ninja Boy
It is best not to approach Watari The Ninja Boy as narrative. It appears as if the writers intended there to be a chronological story, but it is not discernible. […]
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October 23, 2021
Favorite Scenes №15 To Catch A Thief
Hitchcock often made realism and plausibility a priority in his films. Movies like Rope, Strangers on a Train, and Psycho were meant to be seen as events that could […]
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October 23, 2021
How Women’s Bodies Occupy Space In Women Without Men
I didn’t realize how much I adjust my expectations when I sit down to watch an Iranian film. I hear Farsi being spoken, I see […]
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October 23, 2021
Favorite Scenes №14: The Breakfast Club
John Hughes may have his limitations as a filmmaker but in his 1985 comedy The Breakfast Club, he finds an ingenious expositional device that he uses […]
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October 23, 2021
Revenge Of The Virgins, Or How I Got Hoodwinked Into Making A Nudie Film!
Ed Wood didn’t make movies for people to watch, he made movies for him to sell. Marx called it the difference between “use value” and […]
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October 23, 2021
Favorite Scenes №13: Nostalgia
Andre Tarkovsky made his film Nostalgia in 1983. It is a breathtaking two hours and ten minutes of heart-aching humanism. Nestled in the middle of the movie […]
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October 23, 2021
Favorite Scenes №17: Mulholland Drive
David Lynch made Mulholland Drive in 2001. It was the middle film in a Los Angeles trilogy that also included Lost Highway and Inland Empire. The espresso scene […]
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October 22, 2021
The Creation of The Humanoids
The Creation of The Humanoids has all the standard 1960s sci-fi ingredients. We open with lots of stock footage of nuclear explosions. The mushroom clouds are […]
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October 22, 2021
Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me About Parents?
I surf around on Reddit and Letterbox, I subscribe to Kanopy and Criterion, I’ve got Hulu and HBO, why haven’t I ever heard of Bob Balaban’s Parents? Holy Shit, it’s a kick in the teeth! A hard […]
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October 22, 2021
György Pálfi’s Hukkle
The world of cinema is most often constructed out of three shots: the wide shot, the medium shot, and the close-up. It’s a relative analog to […]
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October 22, 2021
Buddha, Japan’s Answer to The Ten Commandments
When Cecil B Demille made The Ten Commandments he made at least some effort to stay true to his source material. It may not be […]
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October 22, 2021
The Ultraman Story
When I was a freshman in college and I first walked into Miller Dining Hall I saw something I had never seen before. There was […]
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October 22, 2021
Favorite Scenes №21 Playtime
In 1967 Jacques Tati brought his signature character, Monsieur Hulot, back to the silver screen. This time in an ambitious and expensive new film entitled […]
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October 22, 2021
The Abnormal Woman
The Abnormal Woman was directed by George Rodgers in 1969. It was filmed without sound and has narration dubbed over it. It came out just […]
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October 22, 2021
3 Sleazy Movies About Adam and Eve: A Comparison
The story of Adam and Eve has been told and retold, interpreted, and analyzed but what the scripture and the analyses leave out is the […]
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October 22, 2021
Favorite Scenes №20: Enter The Dragon
In 1973 Robert Clouse directed, Bruce Lee’s second to last movie Enter The Dragon. It was not a good film, but it contained one of Bruce Lee’s […]
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October 22, 2021
Before ET There Was Meba The Supersonic Saucer
The Supersonic Saucer is a children’s movie made by the Children’s Film Foundation in 1956. It’s a British film directed by Guy Fergusson. I started watching […]
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October 22, 2021
György Pálfi’s Taxidermia
After you recover from the shock of the opening scene you realize you will need to recalibrate your surrealism scale if you are going to […]
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