Around the World in Cinema 2018 - Japan

"In 1987, a straight-to-video series started called Bubblegum Crisis. Futuristic Japan, directly inspired by Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) (and Walter Hill's rock 'n' roll action oddity Streets of Fire (1984), which was much more successful in Japan than in its homeland). A story where mass produced robots nicknamed "Boomers" exist, only for there to be the problem that exists in most anime and manga stories, that they can go kill-crazy and…

Around the World in Cinema 2018 - Iran

Whilst it is a tragedy when a work only exists in fragments, that fragmentation itself adds to it accidentally, imbuing it with new detail. Certain forms of art - in painting to automatic writing - willingly let the unpredictable influence the creation. Censorship or tampering? A different issue entirely but it has to be bared in mind that even the destruction of a film against its will adds a character. Not merely…

Ah, has it really been four years since the last documentary? The last box set for the first documentary has sat proudly in my DVD case, then suddenly a new chapter appears with the addition of two extra discs on Section 3 films, which I even made a list for - letterboxd.com/coheed/list/video-nasties-section-3/ - and I can add the new set side-by-side with the original.

In terms of the documentary, its your standard structured work in the genre, although I'm significantly…

Watching this, I realise the 1) Italian genre cinema deserves as much praiseas being great cinema in craft and that 2) Enzo G. Castellari needs to be placed in the higher tier alongside the Fulcis and Bavas. He feels like a working director, not an author of his work, and he has some inconsistent films in what I've seen, but he needs more than a cult status behind him. This is good already, don't get me wrong, as it lead…