And the kung fu flick hits keep a-rolling. I reviewed these two movies for Cinema Sentries back in March and now you can read them here.
Category: Reviews
Stage Fright (1950)
Alfred Hitchcock is one of my favorite directors. It was my absolute pleasure to watch and reviews Stage Fright (1950) one of his lesser-known films for Cinema Sentries. You can read that review here.
The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (1984)
As you’ve probably guessed by now I’m a huge film of genre cinema. I love horror movies, detective movies, film noir, kung fu movies, and many more. What I love about a genre is that you know what to expect coming in. Genres have conventions. There is something comforting about watching an old western and knowing John Wayne is going to win in the end.
What I love about great genre movies is how they can subvert those conventions. It is really fun to watch a movie where you think you know what is going to happen, only to find out that what happens is completely unexpected.
I don’t know that The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter subverts any of the conventions found in kung fu movie, but I do know that it is a really great kung fu movie with fight scenes that will blow your mind. Sometimes that’s all I really want in a genre movie. You can read my review of it here.
Rogue Cops and Racketeers: Two Crime Thrillers by Enzo G. Castellari
Arrow Video is one of my favorite boutique labels putting out Blu-rays today. What’s great about them is that they find fairly obscure genre movies, restore the audio and video, give them a bunch of special features like audio commentaries and interviews with the filmmakers, and then put them in great little packages.
Sometimes they create boxed sets of similar type of films. They recently put out a couple of Italian crime dramas and boxed them up in a set they called Rogue Cops and Racketeers. I wrote a review of it, which you can read here.
The Initiation of Sarah (1978)
My current plan is to try to repost 3 of my old reviews per day and then link to three reviews I’ve written over at Cinema Sentries. I’m not entirely sure of how many reviews I’ve written in my life, so I have no idea how long that process will take.
I will be writing new reviews pretty regularly both over at Cinema Sentries and possibly just here. I’ve also got a whole lot of journal entries of the year I spent in France that I’d like to repost at some point. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to do that, so it may be a while before you see those thoughts.
There are also some old bootleg reviews, something I used to call Random Shuffle (I’d put my music collection and shuffle and then tell stories about what the songs reminded me of), and lots of other old stuff I’ll eventually repost.
I’m thinking about writing new bootleg reviews pretty regularly and I’m still pondering how best to upload and post new shows. There are all kinds of ideas floating around in my head about what to do with this site, but nothing had quite solidified.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I recently wrote a review for CS about a movie called The Initiation of Sarah. It isn’t a very good movie. It is basically a rip-off of Carrie. But you can read my review here.
One-Armed Boxer (1972)
The thing I love about old kung fu movies is that they can get utterly ridiculous and no one seems to care. One-Armed Boxer is a perfectly ridiculous movie, but I loved it all the same. You can read my full review here.
The Adventures of Don Juan (1948)
The Warner Archive recently released The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) on Blu-ray and I’ve got your review. Who knew I’d become an Errol Flynn fan?
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
The Warner Archive recently released a pretty bare-bones Blu-ray release of the 1941 adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. I watched it (it is pretty good) and reviewed it for Cinema Sentries.
Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema VIII
Beyond horror, I am a huge fan of film noir. That’s a particular type of crime drama was made in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. They use expressionistic black and white photography, a dark, cynical point of view, and usually a hard-boiled detective and a beautiful femme fatale.
Kino Lorber has been regularly putting out nice boxed sets of film noir featuring lesser-known titles in the genre. I recently reviewed one of those sets for Cinema Sentries and you can read it here.
Hell High (1989)
Yesterday I spoke of the joy of reviewing Blu-rays in that it enables me to discover interesting new movies I might have otherwise overlooked. The underside of this is that I sometimes I have sit through (and review) really terrible movies. Hell High was one of those. As you’ve probably figured out I’m a big fan of horror movies and the slasher subgenre of horror. Hell High is a late-period slasher that tries to have fun with the genre’s tropes, and pretty much fails miserably. If you want to know more (and I know you do) then you can read my review here.
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