On the “Late” Jerome Boivin
Continuing with my takes on cinematic underachievers, we come to France’s Jerome Boivin.
The Horror Cinema of Walter Hugo Khouri
Brazil’s Walter Hugo Khouri’s (1929-2003) THE ANGEL OF THE NIGHT and DAUGHTERS OF FIRE are unquestioned genre standouts with David Lynch-worthy surrealism.
The Two Davids
David Cronenberg and David Lynch: two visually gifted, unabashedly idiosyncratic filmmakers, both drawn to bizarre and grotesque subject matter
Tony Scott is Dead
What is there to say about Tony Scott? My word would be reliable.
THE WARD
This may seem like just another trashy potboiler of the type you see dozens of each year, and in many respects that’s just what it is
THE BLIND OWL
A signature film by the ever-eccentric Raul Ruiz, who was here adapting Sadegh Hedayat’s Iranian classic THE BLIND OWL
BENEATH
A quirky sea monster splatter fest from director Larry Fessenden that’s not nearly as terrible as its early reception suggests, although it’s still far from Fessenden’s best work
SUMMER OF SAM
From Spike Lee, a wildly overbaked yet vital account of the seventies-era “Son of Sam” killings. The film has much to say about the effects of fear and paranoia, none of it comforting
STOKER
This, the first-ever English language film by South Korea’s Chanwook Park (of SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE and OLDBOY fame), is an outrageously stylish and fascinating work
THE SKIN I LIVE IN
A rare attempt at genre filmmaking by Spain’s Pedro Almodovar, who provides a visually ravishing exercise in Cronenbergian horror