Simon Thompson looks at the ten best director’s cuts that improve on the original theatrical editions… Director’s cuts are a strange beast indeed. Some of them completely enhance or make amends for the initial movie’s strengths and/or short-comings, but others usually add far too much water to a perfectly good beer (cough… Apocalypse Now Redux…cough) […]
20 Essential Criterion Collection Films
It’s time to cast an eye on the Criterion Collection, a distribution company renowned for giving cult, classic and world cinema a new lease of life… Christopher Nolan and Guillermo del Toro have come out recently and spoken of the importance of physical media and the dangers of everything shifting to digital. The art of […]
Extremely Underrated Cyberpunk Movies You Have To Watch
Marvelous Videos presents cyberpunk hidden gems…. Every day it seems like we’re moving further and further into a cyberpunk world. We used to think that science fiction was purely speculative: crazy ideas dreamed up by wild writers with even wilder imaginations. But now, as corporations gain more power, income inequality grows, and advertising signs glare […]
A Terry Gilliam Christmas
Tom Jolliffe looks back at Brazil and 12 Monkeys, released in December 1985 and 1995 respectively… Former Python animation specialist, Terry Gilliam turned his hand to film direction and became known for creating films absolutely loaded with visual whimsy and outlandishly creative ideas. The limits of budget never stifled Gilliam’s own limits despite some frustrations, […]
The Alternative Halloween Viewing List
Tom Jolliffe offers up a selection of non-horror films to watch this Halloween season, which might just be prescient enough to be horrific… Halloween’s just for horror right? Well what if we’re not watching horror? What if we’re watching action or sci-fi or comedy? It may just be that some of these films have a […]
Ian Holm: A Master of the Craft
Tom Jolliffe looks back at the work of Ian Holm, who sadly passed away this week… There are some actors who elevate everything they do. Even if they become a specialist in supporting roles, popping up in roles, which in lesser hands would be forgotten quickly. Not so with Holm. In a career which began […]
Cinema and the End of the World As We Know It
Tom Jolliffe takes a look at cinema’s end of the world fascination… As we sit in the age of Trump (currently unfazed by the plight of climate change, and skating on a sheet of thin ice as far as North Korean relations) and Brexit, aforementioned climate issues, and a general sense that democratic systems aren’t […]
10 Films You Must Watch On The New Criterion Channel
EJ Moreno on the 10 must-see films on The Criterion Channel… Cinephiles and film school rejects felt crushed when WarnerMedia’s Filmstruck, a streaming service filled with classic and contemporary cinema, shut down late last year. Filmstruck included hundreds and hundreds of the greatest films ever created and allowed new and old fans to enjoy them […]
Flickering Myth Film Class: How to Open Strongly
In the latest instalment of Flickering Myth’s film class, Tom Jolliffe looks at how to open strongly… It takes a great deal to get an audience to succumb to your film. You need to keep their attention for the entirety of the film. The best way to hook them in of course is to open […]
Tomorrow’s World: Part 1 – Why Terry Gilliam’s Brazil represents our near future
Tom Jolliffe on Terry Gilliam’s Brazil… Over the next week I will be looking at a selection of prescient films (and TV) which represent a cutting depiction of not only our present, but our near future. To start the ball rolling here, I consider Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece, Brazil. A look into a bleak, totalitarian future, […]
