Images courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios Italian Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino in the last few years took a stab at horror with his 2018 remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria followed by his post-COVID cannibal romantic thriller Bones and All in 2022.  Showing an enormous amount of confidence when it came to fearlessly diving into transgression before mixing his romantic past with his newfound horror present, Guadagnino very quickly reestablished himself as an uncompromising provocateur ready for anything unafraid to push his audiences into uncomfortable arenas whil ..read more

Images courtesy of Scream Factory Psycho II screenwriter Tom Holland, years before directing the first Child’s Play movie, collaborated twice with director Richard Franklin on Psycho II and the hit videogame kids thriller Cloak & Dagger before ultimately passing on what would’ve been their third film together: the 1984 British teen horror flick Scream for Help.  Deemed too low-budget for the then-growing popularity of Richard Franklin, the project instead went to Cannon Films film worker and British bad boy Michael Winner who poised it in between two of his Death Wish seq ..read more

Images courtesy of MVD Visual The story of Randy Rhoads, the legendary wunderkind lead guitarist behind Quiet Riot and later Ozzy Osbourne, was tragically cut short at the age of twenty-five during a crash of a routine private-plane joyride.  Called everything from ‘the James Dean of rock’n’roll’ to a ‘hair raising’ guitarist, the saga of Randy Rhoads chronicled by NWA & Eazy-E: Kings of Compton documentary filmmaker Andre Relis comes to blu-ray disc via MVD Visual in the form of Randy Rhoads: Reflection of a Guitar Icon.  Finished and released in 2022 and penned by ..read more

Images courtesy of MVD Marquee Collection American musician-songwriter turned writer-director Kurt Voss, best known for his work as the guitarist and songwriter for Hindi Guns as well as the director of Sugar Town, Down and Out with the Dolls and Horseplayer, churned out a number of rock-oriented films with frequent collaborator Allison Anders including Border Radio recently released through the Criterion Collection.   Also a writer on the Will Smith film Where the Day Takes You and the writer-director behind the Alyssa Milano and Ice-T actioner Below Utopia and Jaime Pressl ..read more

  Images courtesy of Bleecker Street Sasquatch Sunset (2024) will likely split audiences down the middle, as its absurdist approach and occasionally shocking humor might alienate some folks. It's a hard movie to market; there is no dialogue, the narrative is freeform, and the actors are unrecognizable in their costumes and makeup. Those who resonate on its wavelength will find much to love, but underneath its surreal toilet humor, it has a soft affection for the furry humanoids.  The film follows four sasquatches over four seasons as they wander the forests of northern C ..read more

Images courtesy of MVD Entertainment Group Music fans Greg Carey and Wade Jackson never made a documentary film before let alone wrote, produced, edited or scored one in a very do-it-yourself fashion.  However when the story of American singer and songwriter Van Duren came about, the former member of the Memphis, Tennessee based band Big Star who broke out on his own to record solo albums and nearly became ‘the next Paul McCartney’ after working with Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham, the duo sprung to action and became part of a chapter of musical history that would ..read more

Images courtesy of Arrow Video Anthony Mann was hitting his stride in the 1950s as a singular auteur of the American western, fresh off of his 1954 Jimmy Stewart starring epic The Far Country involving a nuanced portrait of a complicated antihero and doling out contemporary westerns that seemed to send up expectations of the genre conventions.  Going on to direct two more westerns in 1955 with The Last Frontier and The Man from Laramie, Mann briefly shifted over to a military film with the Paramount Pictures produced VistaVision film Strategic Air Command reuniting the direct ..read more

Images courtesy of PBS Frontline Last week the new A24 film Civil War, Alex Garland’s somber ode to the struggle of the photojournalist pushing towards certain death to document the unfolding events of a military conflict, opened to divided and shocked audiences still processing the filmmaker’s post-apocalyptic fable.  In no uncertain terms does it make clear, whatever side you’re on, the importance of the documentary photographic medium as well as a testament to the bravery of those venturing into dangerous if not deadly situations to capture the truth.  While footage ca ..read more

Images courtesy of Radiance Films Years before the late South Korean director Kim Ki-duk’s Bad Guy and even further before Kinji Fukusaku’s Street Mobster, Shochiku stalwart Noboru Nakamura unveiled his 1964 prostitution drama The Shape of Night which seemed to pave the way for the multicolored romantic longings of epicurean hedonism characterizing Wong Kar-Wai’s kaleidoscopic tales of people falling in and out of love.  A movie signified by its luminous nighttime aesthete of Tokyo neon-fluorescent lighting and moody jazz infused score, the film was decades ahead of American ..read more

Images courtesy of Radiance Films The prolific filmmaking career of Luigi Comencini, perhaps Italy’s best director of child actors since Vittorio De Sica or the French director François Truffaut, remains curiously overlooked outside of Europe.  The father of film directors Cristina and Francesca Comencini who worked with everyone from Marcello Mastroianni, Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Louis Trintignant, Comencini is perhaps best known for Everybody Go Home starring international cast members Martin Balsam, Alex Nicol and Serge Reggiani.  Known for attracting foreign talent ..read more