Despite the horrific elements contained within, Kuroneko is ill served by being pigeon holed into the genre of horror. The genre as a whole has a huge spectrum of intelligence and allegory but there’s more to Kaneto Shindo’s film than this, quite malleable, label. It of course gives scares, and Japanese “horror” is well ahead of the western game in terms of sheer scare value but its … Continue reading Kuroneko – Kaneto Shindo (1968)
This review contains spoilers. Barbet Schroeder’s Maîtresse (1976) is a film that is extremely hard to classify. Even with the hindsight of almost forty years, its apparent bed fellows all share a stubborn resistance to classification. The collection of films with vaguely similar themes and tendencies to push boundaries of explicitness that came out in the 1970s such as Salò Or 120 Days Of Sodom … Continue reading Maîtresse – Barbet Schroeder (1976), BFI.
Article originally published on http://www.ACEliverpool.com There’s something wonderfully timeless about early vampire films. No matter how aged the visuals of screen adaptations look, the bare bones of the narrative make them compelling and often affecting slices of drama. Even the word Nosferatu drips with gothic headiness and its jagged inflections speak of something dark, morbid and supernatural. Though not a completely accurate adaptation of Bram … Continue reading Nosferatu – A Comparison. (F.W Murnau, Werner Herzog)
The slow and gradual death of a number of emotional pillars is a key theme to a much of Ingmar Bergman’s earlier work. Though the death of religion dominates his work fromThe Seventh Seal onwards, the physical death through aging and the passing of time that causes this, is something reserved to his earlier work. However the final conclusion of this act is almost never presented. … Continue reading Summer Interlude – Ingmar Bergman (1951)
One of the many highlights of the 90’s reassertion of realism; The Three Colours Trilogy, by director Krzysztof Kieslowski, can be seen as one of the high bench marks of film before the digital age. It’s hard to imagine a successful set of mainstream films being so metaphorical and altogether emotionally deep getting so far in the world these days, which is why this box set … Continue reading Three Colours Trilogy – Krzysztof Kieslowski (1993)
