Best New To Me 2021
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I discovered this while watching the special features on Arrow’s recent, amazing, release of Joint Security Area and instantly tracked down this old DVD on eBay.

A distinctly Korean film anchoring its action tropes, much like JSA, in the societal tension and danger between North and South Korea.  Still, this is clearly a big budget action film with large strands of DNA borrowed from Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay and John Woo.  It also has echoes…

Best New To Me 2021
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I’d been looking forward to this one for a while.  I’m a Jenny Agutter fan, and a little coming of age thriller set in England in the late 60s seemed ideal.  

Really less of a thriller than a coming of age drama, but it still manages to establish and maintain an air of menace and dread throughout.  Watching two pubescent girls bop around swinging England as young girl killing serial killer is on…

Best New To Me 2021
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Been meaning to watch this slice of late 60s gangster/caper fun and it didn't disappoint.

A young and dashing Michael Caine leaves prison and immediately embarks on a new complicated heist in the Italian city of Turin.

Excitingly shot and well acted. The film really hits its stride in the final third once the heist commences. Shooting on location must have been a bitch and the technical aspects blow me away. Much has been…

My Giallo List - Ranked
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Honestly, I hesitate to even include this on my “Giallo” list.  Sure, in some ways it apes the style of some Gialli and it certainly recycles some of my favorite musical scores from the genre (Case Of The Scorpion’s Tale and What Have They Done To Your Daughters) but two thirds of this film have almost nothing to do with any Gialli.  The third segment, however, certainly feels like an homage to the genre…

Best New To Me 2021
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This is a bonkers late 70s weirdo horror pseudo slasher that if you'd asked me I would have sworn I'd seen.

As it turns out, I definitely never saw this as a kid because had I seen it, I would have been cursed with nightmare fuel for years. This was filmed in the wake of (and with some of the crew from) Texas Chainsaw Massacre and it's another film with a gang of kids…

Best 2020 Horror - Ranked
Best of 2020 - Ranked
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I was absolutely NOT prepared for this one. Such an assured debut from Rose Glass. An incisive script suffused with palpable dread and moments of disorienting terror born out of various forms of loneliness. Gorgeously shot, impeccably acted and with a sound design and score that elevated the dread and tension to 11.

Morfydd Clark is astonishing in the title role channeling any number of Polanski female unhinged protagonists…