Humans and bugs are out to exterminate each other in Verhoeven’s much-maligned ‘fascist’ blockbuster that has enjoyed a cult resurgence, with its nonchalance and irreverence towards the pleasures of gory violence and media brainwashing satirically relevant.
Still needs another much tighter recut, this now unbanned Thai film about a cult of dog-worshipping fanatics is at times intolerable with its B-movie vibe though it unexpectedly turns into something revelatory about the meaning of ‘God’.
One of Morita’s most popular films sees Koji Yakusho and Hitomi Kuroki give exceptional performances as their characters turn extramarital affairs into a tempting fantasy and radical gesture.
A serviceable debut feature that sees Lee Chang-dong attempting a neo-noir that sets up an underworld crime drama of bad decisions and painful consequences, with a touch of rare poignancy.
Probably Miyazaki’s most epic film inasmuch as it is a pure fantasy-adventure with strong themes of peaceful co-existence as battles are waged among humans, animals and spirits.
A French computer programmer attempts to create a game about WWII’s Battle of Okinawa but faces an existential crisis when history, memory and trauma become mediated by the throes of technological change in this spectral final feature documentary from one of cinema’s foremost experimenters.
Dread and unease ooze in abundance in this masterful, bar-raising existential psychological mystery about an exasperated detective trying to solve a series of inexplicable murders.
A fascinating feature debut by Dumont, who captures the tedium of French countryside life by finding beauty in the mundane and the horrific in the nonchalant, working with non-professional actors with aplomb.
This late-career work is one of Chahine’s better efforts—a largely engaging 12th-century epic about the dangers of religious extremism and the power that a humanist philosophy gives to its people.
Largely critically-derided when first released, this violent and erotic nightmare gleefully explores male guilt and fantasy, one that now makes so much sense in Lynch’s terrorising world of weird-ass folks with weird-ass obsessions.
Eternality Tan