by Ard Vijn

Imagine 2019 Review: MONSTRUM Presents Silly, Gory Entertainment

Last year saw several entries added to the sub-sub-genre of Korean history-slash-horror films (and there's even a Korean historical zombie series on Netflix). Last month, the Imagine Film Festival showed one of these: Korean director Huh Jong-ho's historical action thriller...
by Ard Vijn

Check Out Dutch Horror Short SANDWITCH In Full, Online And Free!

Every year at the Imagine Film Festival in Amsterdam, there is a collection of Dutch short genre films shown. Last year, one of the best and funniest of those was Sandwitch (not a typo), a horror comedy directed by Jasper...
by Ard Vijn

Pretty Packaging: PERFECT BLUE Gets A Sweet New Ultimate Edition

Back in early 2014, then-fledgling distributor Anime Limited scored quite a scoop by being the first to release an English-friendly Blu-ray of Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue. Our J. Hurtado reviewed it and as the release wasn't ugly, I put up...
by Ard Vijn

Review: Zhang Yimou's SHADOW, A Feast of Sound and Vision

Being a trained cinematographer, Chinese director Zhang Yimou cannot be accused of making ugly films. Be it a small drama or an epic fantasy flick, the man knows how to shoot pretty pictures, so it will be no surprise that...
by Ard Vijn

Crowdfund This: A Documentary About Dutch Genre Director Dick Maas

(And it's going to be called... Dick Maas: The Documentary) In my home country of the Netherlands, there are plenty of people and filmmakers who are interested in creating genre entertainment, but the industry is generally loath to support them....
by Ard Vijn

Imagine 2019 Review: MEMORY Reminds Us Why We Love ALIEN

(That's Dan O'Bannon peeping around the corner...) Over the past decade, writer-director Alexandre O. Philippe has made a name for himself as a documentary maker, picking all sorts of interesting subjects like Paul the Psychic Octopus, or Star Wars fandom...
by Ard Vijn

Imagine 2019: Heads-Ups And Recommendations

Yesterday saw the start of my favorite Dutch Film event: the Imagine Film Festival in Amsterdam. As festivals go it sure isn't the largest, but their line-up never fails to bring a smile to my face, and each year it...
by Ard Vijn

Pretty Packaging: John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS

(OK, seeing as how the releases are so similar, I'm cribbing the first bit of this article from my previous one about Escape From New York...) Back in November, UK distributor StudioCanal released two of their John Carpenter titles with...
by Ard Vijn

Crowdfund This: THE ROCK OF AGES Looks Mighty Tasty

(No, this is not a documentary overview of Dwayne Johnson's influence over the last decades...) UK-based Australian filmmaker Eron Sheean turned a lot of heads a few years ago with his science fiction drama Errors of the Human Body (read...
by Ard Vijn

Pretty Packaging: John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK

Back in November, UK distributor StudioCanal released two of their John Carpenter titles with some pretty nifty packaging. They were The Fog and They Live, and each set contained the film in 4K UHD, two Blu-rays, and the soundtrack CD...
by Ard Vijn

Blu-ray Review: Anime Limited's PIGTAILS Release Is A Great Compilation

Last week, Scottish distributor Anime Limited released a collection of animated shorts by Japanese studio Production I.G. on Blu-ray (and DVD). All of them are presented in the original Japanese soundtrack with English subtitles, and all of them are good....
by Ard Vijn

Satoshi Kon's PERFECT BLUE Gets The Ultimate Treatment

I'm a big fan of UK-based distributor Anime Limited and that is hardly a secret on the pages of this here site. The company isn't scared to take a risk or two and and even does flat-out crazy things from...
by Ard Vijn

Pretty Packaging: PIGTAILS Packs A Punch

Shorts. What to do with them? Many of them are magnificent, yet the current market hasn't figured out how to make them commercial blockbusters yet. You get to see great ones at each festival, but good luck finding them afterwards,...
by Ard Vijn

Check Out The Shivers Special, Playing In Konstanz, With TRIPLE THREAT Included!

Film festivals can be grand, a place to discover new films, see the ones you've heard about, and chat about your favorites with complete strangers. The Shivers festival in Konstanz is such an event. I visited it last November, and...
by Ard Vijn

Pretty Packaging: The Psycho PSYCHO Boxset From Germany

(Those crazy Germans sure are mad about Psycho, judging from this insane release, hurhur...) Being Dutch, it pays to be a bit polyglot; nobody wants to speak our language, and as a nation of merchants, we adapted by learning to...
by Ard Vijn

Rotterdam 2019: What The Audiences Liked Best

Two weeks ago, the 2019 International Film Festival in Rotterdam came to an end. Probably the largest cultural event in the Netherlands, with over 300,000 tickets sold each year, for me it's hard to believe it's already gone again. Time...
by Ard Vijn

Rotterdam 2019 Review: MONUMENT Builds Up To Something Memorable

During her intro at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Polish director Jagoda Szelc stated that in her new feature film Monument, she doesn't try to tell a story. She asked the audience to watch the film with the idea that...
by Ard Vijn

Review: BIRDS OF PASSAGE, How the Drug Trade Changes People

Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra have made a beautiful film about Wayuu culture and the drug trade.
by Ard Vijn

Watch All Hell Break Loose In HIGGS, A Magnificent Proof of Concept Video

(Ouch... that looks like it hurts...) It's already more than a decade ago that we were rocked by two excellent proof-of-concept videos for a Nazi zombie cyborg project called Worst Case Scenario. And while that film unfortunately got itself stuck...
by Ard Vijn

Rotterdam 2019 Review: CAPERNAUM Delivers A Magnificent Punch

Last Friday, at the 2019 edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the audience award went to a film which managed to score an average of 4.8 out of 5. That film was writer-director Nadine Labaki's Capernaum, and while it...