There’s something both strange and familiar about Sweeney Todd. It is a tale that has been recounted on both the large and small screens several times over the last century and yet most people only know the broad strokes of the story – the serial killer who runs a barber’s shop that provides filling for the meat pies in the café below.
Review by Alex Fitch
Perfect Blue director Satoshi Kon’s new animated epic is a dreamlike, kaleidoscopic fantasy that promises much but ultimately fails to deliver.
Review by Alex Fitch
The sign on the way into town reads: ‘Weedsville, pop: 490,000’. It’s a run-down, post-industrial city on a wrong turn somewhere off the interstate where disenfranchised youth get high in derelict factories and Satanists sacrifice virgins in the drive-in theatre on the outskirts of town.
Review by Alex Fitch
Finally available to watch on British DVD almost a decade after production began, Jin-Roh is a moving and beguiling animé that is a worthy addition to the oeuvre of celebrated Japanese director Mamoru Oshii.
Review by Alex Fitch
Although it’s being marketed as the third Ghost in the Shell film, the acronym friendly GitS: S.A.C. – SSS is the most recent (feature-length) episode of the TV series Stand Alone Complex. Based on the same manga by Masamune Shirow that inspired Mamoru Oshii’s two movies, Solid State Society is confusingly being presented as a sequel, although for the casual viewer there are enough connections with the originals both in terms of theme and returning characters to justify this.
Review by Alex Fitch