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.

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).

A Fantastic Movie

Out on UK screens this Friday (2nd of March) is Oscar nominated Chilean drama A Fantastic Woman. Here is my review, which be warned does include a few minor spoilers, so if you want to see it cold please read this post viewing.

BBC One’s Requiem could be the best British TV horror story in years

Sorry, it’s been a slow start to the blog in 2018 as life has got in the way. But here is my first piece of the year, an introduction to the BBC’s new horror series Requiem. 

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.

Shin the Loop – Shin Godzilla is a dull retread of a classic

I have always loved monster movies so the one day only UK cinema release of Shin Godzilla was not something I was going to miss. Review follows…

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.

Exhuming The Entity

Screened as part of the Cinema Rediscovered festival in Bristol, Sidney J. Furie’s 1982 supernatural horror film The Entity is ripe for reappraisal (and it is now available on Blu Ray in the UK). This rare big screen outing for a film that has languished in relative obscurity since its original release was presented by The Final Girls (@thefinalgirlsuk) Anna Bogutskaya and Olivia Howe. They first apologised for what they were about to put the audience through, but looked forward to hearing post film reactions. Frankly, I was a little too stunned by the movie to offer any in the immediate aftermath. Hopefully the following review makes up for that.

Be warned, spoilers do follow…

Television, the drug of the nation: tuning back into Network

Part of the Cinema Rediscovered Festival at Bristol’s Watershed cinema, it was a pleasure to see Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film Network on the big screen for the first time. If you haven’t seen the film some mild spoilers follow…