Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Tom Jolliffe

Enter The Muscles from Brussels: The Jean-Claude Van Damme Tournament Fight Film

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Tom Jolliffe looks at Jean-Claude Van Damme’s history of tournament fight films… If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. For a while in the earlier career of Jean-Claude Van Damme, that seemed to be more or less the case. When Enter the Dragon ended up as a cultural and cinematic phenomenon, a host of imitators […]

10 Essential Revenge Films

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Tom Jolliffe offers up ten essential revenge films… A dish best served cold. The humble revenge film. It’s a long tried and tested formula which still proves immensely popular. There have been innumerable films but that overriding quest for vengeance is always there. Picking 10 essential films in such a wide and all encompassing genre […]

10 Delightful Films to Brighten Your Day

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Tom Jolliffe with a selection of 10 delightful films that can’t fail to brighten your day… Well ladies and gents, it looks like we’re still in the midst of some kind of biblical meltdown. Between a virus that’s spread the world, to political discord, societal discord, things are bad and all the while every app […]

Netflix and Conan the Barbarian: What We’d Like to See

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Tom Jolliffe offers his two cents on the potential of Netflix bringing Conan back to screens… For years fans of Conan The Barbarian have waited with baited breath for the potential of a new film. Most predominantly among those, there has been a particular clamour for Arnold Schwarzenegger to return to the role which broke him […]

Denis and Dune: Reckless financial decision, or potential film for the ages?

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Tom Jolliffe takes a look at the interesting case of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation… Denis Villeneuve returns with another epic sci-fi. He’s fast becoming the master of rich sci-fi cinema, catering to cinephiles looking to give themselves over to a piece, rather than let excessive theatrics wash over them. Villeneuve is the antithesis to the […]

Cinema’s Groundbreakers – George Lucas’ Star Wars

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In the latest in our ground breakers series, Tom Jolliffe looks back at where an entire franchise began in 1977’s Star Wars… It may seem odd to think, but at one time, Star Wars was something of a financial gamble. There was as much mirth at the prospect of a space saga, B picture as […]

The Defining Works of Takeshi Kitano

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Tom Jolliffe looks at the career defining works of legendary Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano… Fans of Japanese cinema will no doubt be familiar with the iconic Takeshi name. Sometimes billed by nickname as Beat Takeshi, or more retrospectively now as Takeshi Kitano, this actor and comedian (most notable during the late 80’s for the oddball […]

Has Showgirls actually become kind of good?

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Tom Jolliffe takes a look back at Showgirls, once universally derided and considered one of the worst films ever… but is it actually misunderstood? Upon its release in 1995, Paul Verhoeven’s trashy spectacular, Showgirls was obliterated by critics. It was a lavish, Vegas set tale with plenty of excess dismissed as vacuous, grimy and seedy. […]

Cinema’s Groundbreakers – Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon

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Continuing a look back at some of the most ground-breaking films in cinema, Tom Jolliffe takes a look at Rashomon… When looking back through the work of Akira Kurosawa, it would be difficult to pinpoint only one film as particularly ground-breaking. The truth his, through his early career in a post-war boom for Japanese cinema […]