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Reviews & Commentary by Adam Groves
ROLLING THUNDER
One of the finest action films of ithe seventies, offering up naturalistic drama and brutal action in equal doses
CECIL B. DEMENTED
Far from John Waters’ best work, but funny and perceptive enough in its corrosive portrayal of guerilla filmmaking to warrant a qualified recommendation
A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM
A black comedy whose effectiveness pivots on an unexpected but quite canny casting choice: Michael Caine, playing a New York businessman using highly unorthodox practices to get ahead
AKIRA
This is the 1988 cyberpunk-themed anime feature that, prior to game-changers like GHOST IN THE SHELL and PERFECT BLUE, irrevocably altered the format
WHALE MUSIC
The late John Candy was a galvanizing force behind this film, which was released in 1994 (the year of Candy’s demise)
THE BOOK OF A THOUSAND SINS
Fifteen stories: energetic and focused to a fault, and exhibiting an unnerving willingness to gaze unblinkingly into the darkest depths of madness, mutilation and sexual deviance
IN THE DARK
By 1994 the late Richard Laymon had been a professional writer for over fifteen years, and that accumulated skill illuminates IN THE DARK
9/30/55
A unique movie novelization from one of the top novelizers of the 1970s and 80s
THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED
The most notorious “lost” film of our—if not all—time, reviewed in screenplay form
FULLY DRESSED AND IN HIS RIGHT MIND
Certainly one of the most unusual novels to emerge from the 1930s hard-boiled school
HALLOWEEN 3–“WHERE THE HELL IS MICHAEL MYERS?”
A history of “horror’s most misunderstood film,” written by that film’s own writer-director
THE MONSTER SHOW: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF HORROR
20th Century horror, as covered by the enromously intelligent and always entertaining David J. Skal
GILLIAMESQUE
A “Pre-Posthumous Memoir” by the outspoken London-based cartoonist-turned-director Terry Gilliam, and everything you’d expect
NEUE SLOWENISCHE KUNST
From the underground publishing outfit Amok Books, a sumptuously designed art book about a most unique European art collective
THE EXOTIC ONES: THAT FABULOUS FILMMAKING FAMILY FROM MUSIC CITY, USA–THE ORMONDS
It’s hard to believe this large format hardcover is the first book devoted to the Ormonds, but I’m glad it’s finally here, and that it delivers on its promise
TV Flashback: A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS
The Christmas ghost story is a British tradition that found its ideal screen capture in the BBC’s A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS
On KIN-DZA-DZA!
One of the world’s major science fiction films, regardless of whether the world knows about it or not
H.P. Lovecraft and Colin Wilson: A Match Made in Kadath
About the Lovecraft inspired fiction of the late Colin Wilson
TV Flashback: YOGI AT THE MOVIES
Yogi Berra, film critic?
John Carpenter, Halloween Maestro
The aesthetic qualities of John Carpenter’s films are certainly worth enumerating. My interest here is in how those films and their maker transformed Hollywood