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Reviews & Commentary by Adam Groves
THE BEEKEEPER
A Jason Statham movie with most everything that portends, meaning THE BEEKEEPER (2024) won’t ever be mistaken for CITIZEN KANE
A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1987)
An enormously iconic Hong Kong fantasy, although I’ve never been all that impressed by it.
THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD
A film that in most particulars would appear to qualify for Profoundly Weird status, but which in the filmography of its director, Canada’s Guy Maddin, doesn’t seem too strange at all
BUFFET FROID
A very bizarre 1979 comedy by France’s Bertrand Blier that functions as a film noir parody, a cautionary essay on contemporary dehumanization and an unfiltered blast of surreal invention
FAUST (1994)
Jan Svankmajor does FAUST. Need I say more?
PRINCE OMBRA
“If Stephen King wrote fairy tales”
MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN
This eighties updating of THE INVISIBLE MAN has been out of print for over thirty years, but was quite popular in its day
RED BRIDE
The late Christopher Fowler was and remains a writer worth reading, but RED BRIDE probably isn’t the best place to start.
THE CLUB DUMAS
Am I wrong for admitting I didn’t much like this highly revered novel?
NINE HORRORS AND A DREAM
The spirit of WEIRD TALES illuminates this slim collection of stories by Joseph Payne Brennan
KEN RUSSELL: A DIRECTOR IN SEARCH OF A HERO
A short book but also a valuable one, representing as it does a meeting of two most interesting minds: author Colin Wilson and filmmaker Ken Russell
INVASION OF THE SPACE INVADERS
Here we have a definite literary oddity, a celebration of the video game scene of the early 1980s by the snootier-than-thou British novelist Martin Amis
BEST. MOVIE. YEAR. EVER. HOW 1999 BLEW UP THE BIG SCREEN
Yes, that title is serious: author Brian Raftery really believes 1999 was the “best” movie year ever
AMERICATHON: THE SKITS BEHIND THE SCREENPLAY
The futuristic comedy AMERICATHON has since become quite the cult item, and this book relates how the movie came about
A HISTORY OF UNDERGROUND COMICS
The first and very likely best history of underground “comix” in America
Performer Profile: Elina Löwensohn
The fabulously exotic Elina Löwensohn, who for a time was the indie “it” girl, and remains an actress to watch
1981: The Year in Bedlam
Just what the title says.
CRUST and THE CALAMARI WRESTLER
An example of the type of filmic simultaneity that I enjoy investigating: two films released within a year of each other headlined by man-sized aquatic critters
Remembering That Which Is Better Forgotten: NEWSIES and SWING KIDS
An entire book can be written on the Mouse Factory’s ealry 90s output, which is of definite interest to cult movie buffs
Performer Profile: Jennifer Jason Leigh
One of the most talented and uninhibited actors of our age. That is all.