One of the main unifying traits that connects nearly all the filmmakers who were part of the New Hollywood Cinema period (not every last one, of course) was their knowledge of cinema. For most of them, this was the result of having gone through film school rather than come up as an apprentice, the way […]
A review requested by Chris D, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I seem to have done this slightly out of order, non? So you’ll have to forgive me if I simply borrow what I said the last time I visited the most famous, infamous, and contentious of […]
1968, the bright dividing line between contemporary and classic horror – in the autumn of that year, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead brought terrifyingly explicit violence and gore to the genre and things change forever. But that groundbreaking horror classic was beat to theaters by a few months by a film whose […]
A review requested by Teo Bugbee, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. As both a production company and a shorthand for describing a certain flavor of self-consciously middlebrow literate cinema, Merchant Ivory takes its name and identity from professional and life partners James Ivory, who directed, and Ismail […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: Magic Mike XXL continues its predecessor’s look at the lives of men who dance dirty for a living. Not […]
From among the Video Nasties Any honest accounting of the history of American horror filmmaking has to bow in the direction of the enormous influence of The Last House on the Left, the 1972 debut of writer-director Wes Craven and a solid contender for the title of most controversial movie of the last half-century. It […]
A review requested by Frankie Shoup, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I should like it very much if it were a bit easier to find any English-language resources on the reception granted to the 1988 anime feature Akira during its initial release in Japan. It was an […]
Herschell Gordon Lewis has long been known as the Godfather of Gore. In recent years, that nickname was used as the title of a documentary; Lewis has embraced it himself, adopting the name on his official website. In fact, the website goes one further: Lewis is, in his own words “the Godfather of Direct Marketing […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: the plot of Ted 2 touches on the sex life of a human woman and a talking animal brought […]
A review requested by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous, with thanks for donating to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. No film shamelessly advertised with the tagline “Part Heaven… Part Hell… Pure Havana” can possibly be all good. To be fair to 1979’s Cuba, though, it’s nobody’s fault but the marketing […]
