Temporarily Streaming For Free: XANGADIX LIVES!
Several distribution companies try to help making self-isolation somewhat more bearable in the coming weeks by streaming titles for free. Today a new title got added, and it's such a fun one that I want to point it out here:...
Rotterdam 2020 Review: Saeed Roustayi's JUST 6.5 Scores An 8.8
Iran. As a country, we often see it in the news as "the other", a large territory in the Middle East which is, if not outright antagonistic, at the very least totally alien. It's quite an eye-opener when all those...
Rotterdam 2020 Review: SAINT MAUD Knocks You Down With A Punishing Fist
There are different ways for a film to floor you. Some pull the rug from under you with plot twists and surprises, others take a simple idea and then proceed to push you to the ground with precision and force....
Rotterdam 2020 Review: CHILDREN OF THE SEA Washes Over You Like A Wave
Watanabe Ayumu's newest anime feature is beautifully drawn and features a rousing score by Joe Hisaishi, but the spectacle trumps the plot.
Rotterdam 2020 Review: PARASITE (B&W VERSION)
On the ninth of February 2020, Korean director Bong Joon Ho came, saw and conquered the Oscars with his film Parasite. A week earlier, he came, saw and conquered the International Film Festival Rotterdam. An old friend of the festival...
Rotterdam 2020 Interview: Mattie Do Talks About THE LONG WALK
A few years ago, the International Film Festival Rotterdam re-instated its genre segment, the Rotterdämmerung, as part of the general program. And ever since it's back, it is always literally the first part of the programming where I will look....
Rotterdam 2020 Review: DRAMA GIRL
People have been making films for well over a century already, so it's quite an achievement when you see something new being tried, without it being so radical that it makes your eyes bleed. A recent example would be One...
Rotterdam 2020 Review: MOSQUITO
Last Wednesday saw the opening of the 2020 edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the film which kicked it off was João Nuno Pinto's Portuguese war drama Mosquito. Based for a large part on the stories his grandfather...
Rotterdam 2020: Heads-Ups And Recommendations
Last evening (January 22nd) saw the grand opening of the 49th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which means that for 11 days, people in the Netherlands can indulge themselves with some serious movie madness. Over 500 titles will...
Ard's Dozen Of Musings About 2019
Last year I started my overview of 2018 with lamenting about how few films I had seen. The sad truth is: in 2019 I saw even significantly less. I strive for at least 150 films each year, yet in 2019...
Crowdfund This: Please Tell Hal Hartley WHERE TO LAND?
Hal Hartley is no stranger to crowdfunding. Over the past years, he has used Kickstarter to finance Ned Rifle, the last part of his Henry Fool trilogy, and to restore (and re-issue) his own back-catalogue of films. And now he...
ScreenAnarchy's Top Ten Films of 2019
As 2019 comes to an end, ScreenAnarchy’s global team of critics and cineastes weighs in with our favourite cinematic offerings from the past 12 months, which saw Netflix lead the charge for cementing the legitimacy of the streaming platforms, while...
Shivers 2019 Review: FEHÉRLÓFIA Provides Mythical Psychedelic Visions
The Shivers Film Festival in the German city of Konstanz can pride itself with a killer line-up of new films each year, but the roster always also contains the odd classic or two. This year, Ridley Scott's seminal Alien got...
Shivers 2019: An Aftermath Of Shorts This Friday
The Konstanz-based genre film festival called Shivers has come and gone in November, and to my shame I still have to finish some articles about it. For fans of the festival (or just fans of great cinema) who live a...
Pretty Packaging: Criterion's GODZILLA SHOWA ERA Boxset Is A Monster
We've said it before: Criterion doesn't often release "pimped" vanity sets, but when they do... ooooh boy. And perceptive fans of the distributor knew that something spectacular would be happening. Criterion was one of the first companies to use spine...
Pretty Packaging: Criterion's THE KOKER TRILOGY Is An Iranian Russian Doll
If we look at the Blu-ray distributing landscape, I think nobody will contest that Criterion is the most prestigious company in existence there. From 1984 onward the company has focused on quality, and, quoting Wikipedia: "Criterion is noted for helping...
Shivers 2019 Review: THE MORTUARY COLLECTION
Ryan Spindell's horror anthology is a visual feast, and Clancy Brown is fantastic in it.
SHIVERS 2019 Features Another Goosebump-inducing Line-up
For the past few years I've written an alert of sorts about Germany's genre film festival Shivers, in the city of Konstanz. each time, the reason has been that the fest's line-up was unusually strong. In 2018 the festival allowed...
Camera Japan 2019 Review: RISE OF THE MACHINE GIRLS Doesn't Elevate Its Niche
Back in 2007, our site got one of its highest traffic spikes when we hosted the outrageous trailer for Iguchi Noboru's The Machine Girl. For many people, it was their first exposure to Japan's bloody splattergore genre. And when the...
Review: MEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIEN Bursts Open Mythology
(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...
