Tag: movie reviews

The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (1984)

8 diagram pole fighter blu-ray



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

rogue cops and racketeers
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)

the initiation of sarah

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.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema VIII

film noir

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)

hell high bluray

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.

The Righteous (2021)

the righteous

One of the joys of reviewing movies for Cinema Sentries is that I sometimes get a chance to see something I might not have watched were it not for them. Our cinematic world these days is so filled with multi-film universes and blockbuster franchises that smaller, independent films often get blocked out, when they are even made at all.

I recently got to see The Righteous, a movie I’d never heard of before the Blu-ray landed in my mailbox. I’m glad it did. Not because it is perfect, but because it at least tries for something different. Anyway, click here for my review.