Tom Jolliffe looks at two of the best action films of the last decade, Mad Max: Fury Road and Top Gun: Maverick… There are great films. There are great action films. Attaining greatness through your action amounts to nailing your set pieces and imbuing proceedings, with just enough characterisation to give the propellant action some […]
Cage as Cage, Van Damme as Van Damme: Two Icons Play Their Ultimate Role
Tom Jolliffe looks at Nic Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and compares with Jean-Claude Van Damme’s temporarily redefining role as himself in JCVD… April 2022 included a special day for me. It was something of an event. I got to see Nicolas Cage strut his stuff on the big screen. Maybe 10-15 […]
Northman the Barbarian: How Conan Courses Through The Northman
Tom Jolliffe looks at the similarities between The Northman and Conan the Barbarian. Spoilers follow… After success and masses of acclaim for his small scale masterworks The Witch and The Lighthouse, director Robert Eggers went large scale in his third outing. The Northman is a big budget Viking revenge epic. In every way, it’s the […]
The Art of Ambiguity in Cinema
Tom Jolliffe looks at the finest in ambiguous cinema, and asks ‘how do you pull it off?’… Often in the law books of screenwriting there’s a section which might tell the studious aspiring writer that a film must have clarity. Plot threads must lead to resolution. Each act and your central character arcs should be […]
Revisiting Deep Cover at 30
Tom Jolliffe looks back at the Bill Duke-directed Deep Cover at 30… The year is 1992. A second revolution in black cinema was already underway after Spike Lee’s fresh and inventive hits like Do The Right Thing and She’s Gotta Have It had broken open doorways. That first wave in the 70s, with a boom […]
Wry, Prophetic, Smart and Brutal: RoboCop at 35
Tom Jolliffe looks back at RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven’s ahead-of-the-curve masterpiece, as it turns 35… Okay creeps. Dead or alive, you’re coming with me… to look back at RoboCop. The dead part might be a bit much, but I’m sure you’re game. The iconic sci-fi actioner is 35 years old. There is a huge weight behind […]
When It’s Time to Let Go of Star Wars
Tom Jolliffe on that fateful day when you realise Star Wars is no longer being made for you. Let go, you must… Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi has been and gone. Rather than roaring like a hungry Wampa, it meekly wheeled itself out like an R2 unit which can no longer beep and boop like it […]
Wes Craven: The Ultimate Horror Groundbreaker?
Tom Jolliffe looks back at three milestones in Wes Craven’s career, A Nightmare on Elm Street, New Nightmare and Scream… In cinema there are plenty of great films. There are examples of exceptional filmmaking and populist films which become a cultural phenomenon. Some directors might be fortunate enough to create a groundbreaking film. These could […]
Garish Colour, Prog Rock, Masked Killers and a Glass Fetish: Dario Argento’s Glory Years
With his new giallo Dark Glasses coming to Shudder in October, Tom Jolliffe looks back at the defining films of Dario Argento… Looking back over his peak years, whilst Dario Argento may not have been the first pioneer of Giallo horror, he followed in the footsteps of the great Mario Bava and popularised Italian horror […]
The Essential Don “The Dragon” Wilson Movies
Tom Jolliffe on the essential films of Don “The Dragon” Wilson… The wondrous lure of the video rental store. Slightly sticky carpets with weathered fibres in the horror and/or erotica sections. Many a lumbering boot had trod before the shelf where the latest Shannon Tweed films were housed. I’d spend ages perusing and taking in […]
