Cinema Rediscovered 2018: Taking the train uptown with Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.

My second and final piece from my time at last weekend’s superb four-day Cinema Rediscovered festival at Bristol’s Watershed Arts Cinema looks a Leslie Harris’ wonderful film Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. This was the centerpiece movie of the festival, used as key art on the festival poster and presented on a lovely 35mm print brought over to the West Country from the US by the film’s director. Despite having won a major award at Sundance and being released to acclaim in the nineties, this print is now only one. A shocking state of affairs.

Cinema Rediscovered 2018: Trapped in THE MAFU CAGE. When is a cult film not a cult film?

Shown as part of this year’s Cinema Rediscovered Festival at the Bristol Watershed, The Mafu Cage had me stumbling out of the cinema wondering WTF did I just watch… so I had to tell you about it.

Game on! Spielberg’s Ready Player One is a delicious digital malt shake with cream and a cherry on top.

Here is my relatively spoiler free review of Ready Player One…

Hidden Gems – rediscovering American Mary

Jen and Sylvia Soska’s 2012 film American Mary is a highly original horror film that flew under the radar on it’s original release and is ripe for rediscovery (or maybe just discovery).

Guest blog – The Lynch Gaze

To celebrate the release of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return on Blu Ray on December the 4th, here is a second guest blog by Jacqui Barr following her Mad Max: Fury Road piece which remains the most popular thing I’ve ever posted on here. Enjoy.

!!!WARNING: SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP!!!

Guest blog – XX marks the future

Hello my good fiends, to mark the passing of Samhain and the beginning of winter, I am bringing you only the second ‘guest’ post in this blogs brief history. A few words of introduction, apart from being a dear friend of mine (one who I shall be having for dinner soon) Mr David William Hall was my editor at the late and highly lamented Verite Magazine (all issues archived online here). Along with Toby Weidmann editor of Official Walking Dead Magazine, I credit David’s gossamer editorial touch, critical insight, and encouragement for making my writing at least passably readable.

Obviously the views and opinions that follow are the author’s own, but they appear with the complete endorsement of this blog, with the caveat that I liked the Annie Clark segment of XX, and still think Rosemary’s Baby is a classic horror film.

Is Darren Aronofsky’s mother! the most reviled masterpiece of 2017? – Spoilers ahoy!

Darren Aronofsky’s new film mother! arrived in nachoplexes this weekend (15th September) carrying a huge weight of anticipation following a carefully calibrated and secretive marketing campaign and a premiere screening at the Venice Film Festival that provoked both applause and catcalls from the audience (at least at the early morning press screening). Now sooner did it arrive than it died at the box office, opening below projections with a reported $7.5m in the US and achieving a rare F from Cinemascore, the lowest possible rating from the site that polls opening weekend audiences in the US as they leave the theatre.

Equating the worth of a movie to its box office success is something only idiots do, but it is interesting to consider why Aronofsky’s film has received such a rough reception from audiences whilst simultaneously being generally well received by critics. That is what I’m going to try to do with this blog whilst also discussing the film, and my personal interpretation of its meaning in depth.

In order to achieve this, I will thoroughly spoil the film. So if you haven’t seen it and you intend to… do not read past the jump. In fact, even if you don’t intend to see it, don’t read past the jump. Because who knows, one night you might stumble over it in late night TV, or find it as an in-flight movie (a hilariously unlikely prospect, but you never know). Trust me, you should see this film as cold as possible for it to realize maximum effect.

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN – HORROR HOUNDS PROWLING THE MARGINS

This started as a review of Hounds of Love, and has mutated into a meditation on genre. It’s a bit rambling, and once again I wish I could afford to pay someone to edit this stuff, but I hope those of you interested in horror and the fringes of the genre find something of interest in it.

All alone in bedsit land – Gareth Tunley’s The Ghoul reviewed

Full disclosure, I’ve known The Ghoul’s writer/director Gareth Tunley since the mid-nineties, even shared a flat together in Walthamstow. So approaching his feature debut dispassionately is not really happening.

I first saw the film a year ago before its successful festival run (The Ghoul played the London Film Festival and Mayhem in Nottingham among others), and the first thing that hit me was an overwhelming wave of relief that I didn’t have to look shifty and tell Big Daddy G ‘the cinematography is nice’ before suddenly remembering I had a bus to catch.

I had intended not to write the film up, figuring it as a conflict of interest (like the big I am that I am) and as others have done a sterling job of doing so (including such genre critics as Anton Bitel and Kim Newman in Empire Magazine.

But as The Ghoul is about to be released on the 4th August in the UK by Arrow Releasing on a limited theatrical run with a DVD and Blu Ray release following on 4th September, and as this is my blog and I’m beholden to nobody… fuck it, here’s a review of Gareth Tunley’s The Ghoul.

Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames reignited

In my finale communiqué from the Cinema Rediscovered festival in Bristol I take a look at Lizzie Borden’s 1983 film Born in Flames. This was a major discovery for me, Lizzie Borden being a director I was not that familiar with having only seen her film Working Girls some 25 years ago whilst a student.