Category Archives: Online Issues

Issue 72: Fortresses

Fortresses: Hidden, black, ancient, high-rise and alternative

This month we are proud to present a 35mm screening of Michael Mann’s rare 1983 film The Keep in collaboration with Cigarette Burns at the Prince Charles in London on 21 February. This is the occasion for a look at fortresses on film, with reviews of The Keep, Akira Kurosawa’s feudal Japan tale The Hidden Fortress and housing project-set shocker Citadel, an interview with Citadel director Ciaran Foy, a feature on alternative fortresses and a Comic Strip Review of Time Bandits. And we also have a Reel Sounds column on the Tangerine Dream soundtrack to Michael Mann’s Thief.

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Issue 71: Repulsion

Repulsion: The strange attraction of dark emotions, vile acts and messed up characters

To coincide with the BFI’s extended run of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, we look at the repellent anti-hero of Maniac in our Comic Strip Review, the disgust caused by the hellish David Mamet-scripted Edmond, and vomit in film. Our Reel Sounds column is on the beautiful score to the shockingly disturbing Cannibal Holocaust.

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Issue 70: Koji Wakamatsu

Kôji Wakamatsu: Porn, politics and provocation

This month we honour the late Kôji Wakamatsu, great provocateur and ‘godfather of the pink movie’, who mixed sex, violence and politics to explosive effect. We have reviews of Violent Virgin, Running in Madness, Dying in Love, Go, Go Second-Time Virgin, Secret Acts behind Walls, Pool without Water and Caterpillar, as well as a Comic Strip Review of Naked Bullet and a Reel Sounds column on the Ecstasy of the Angels soundtrack. An article taken from Behind the Pink Curtain by Jasper Sharp looks at Wakamatsu’s career and we have an interview with the man himself on his Mishima film, 11.25. The Day He Chose His Own Fate, one of his last to be completed.

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Issue 69: Creatures

Creatures: Ancient beasts, mystical monsters, sleepwalking murderers

As winter sets in the creatures come out of the dark: The Golem is conjured up, Conrad Veidt is the puppet of a sinister hypnotist in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, a primitive beast terrorizes Trans-Siberian passengers in 70s Spanish horror movie Horror Express and we have a feature on ‘Female Creatures and Science Experiments Gone Amiss’. In Alter Ego, Sam Hawken is Underworld’s Selene while our Comic Strip Review is on Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen.

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Issue 68: Freedom

Freedom: Skid row outsiders, uninhibited deviants and liberating servitude

As fantastical paean to harsh, wild freedom Beasts of the Southern Wild hits the screens this month, we look at various forms of cinematic freedom, from John Waters’s outrageous black comedy Female Trouble to The Master and the films of Paul Thomas Anderson while our Comic Strip Review is on The Prisoner. And Greg Klymkiw talks about freedom and servitude with the Brothers Quay to mark the American DVD release of Institute Benjamenta.

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Issue 67: Memory

Memory: Lost love remembered, ghosts of the living and the dead, bygone cinema

Memory is our autumnal theme this month with reviews of Miguel Gomes’s wonderful tale of past wrong love Tabu and The Swimmer, Frank Perry’s startling 1968 portrayal of a man coming to terms with his life. We have an interview with Guy Maddin about his latest ghostly reverie Keyhole and a feature on Hirokazu Kore-eda, director of After Life and Nobody Knows. Our Comic Strip Review remembers an episode from a BBC TV series from the past, A Ghost Story for ChristmasWhistle and I’ll Come to You. In Alter Ego, writer Will Wiles is Grosse Pointe Blank‘s Martin Blank.

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Issue 66: Fakes

Fakes: False child, art forgery, duplicitous moles, unreliable reality

August is full of fakes: in Bart Layton’s jaw-dropping documentary The Imposter, a man impersonates a missing child; James Marsh’s Shadow Dancer is a fictional account of an IRA member turned informer; Orson Welles explores art forgery in F for Fake; Israeli series Prisoners of War deals with released prisoners who may have been ‘turned’; Powell and Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! creates authenticity through cinema trickery. We have features on myth fabrication in Searching for Sugar Man and fakery in Christopher Nolan’s films. Peter Strickland talks about his giallo homage Berberian Sound Studio while our Comic Review is on The Rutles.

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Issue 65: Mutations

Mutations: Metal men, werewolf girls, freaks and hybrids

July is all about mutations as the East End Film Festival presents brand new restorations of Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s cyberpunk landmark Tetsuo: Iron Man and its sequel Tetsuo II: Body Hammer. We also a feature on Prometheus and panspermia and reviews of David Cronenberg’s tragic horror movie The Fly, John Fawcett’s Ginger Snaps, in which a misfit teenage girl’s struggles with puberty and fitting in are played out as werewolf transformation, and Peter Greenaway’s The Belly of an Architect, about an obsessed man dying of cancer. In Alter Ego, Tom Pollock is Jurassic Park‘s Dr Henry Wu and our Comic Strip Review is on Italian techno Western The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, starring Vincent Gallo.

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Issue 64: Sion Sono

Sion Sono: Social earthquakes, secret cults and strange perversions

The release of Himizu, a powerful manga-adapted teen drama set in post-tsunami Japan, is the occasion to take a closer look at the work of maverick director Sion Sono. We have an interview with Sono and a review of Exte: Hair Extensions, as well as previous reviews of Guilty of Romance, Cold Fish, Love Exposure and Suicide Club.

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Issue 63: Treachery

Treachery: Cheaters, liars, tricksters and traitors

Treachery is this month’s theme: we have reviews of True Love, a thriller that explores the dangerous consequences of lying to your spouse, and Extracted, a cerebral puzzler that explores the truths and lies we tell ourselves, both screening at SCI-FI-LONDON, Vincente Minelli’s take on glamorous betrayal in Hollywood The Bad and the Beautiful, Australian tale of scapegoats in the Boer War Breaker Morant and high-octane Welsh-directed Indonesian martial arts actioner The Raid, which is released this month.

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