Somewhere in Iceland, someone looked at Beauty and the Beast and thought, “What if we removed the comfort, the romance, and most of the sanity?” That someone was director Max Gold, and the result is a 2023 adaptation that feels less like a fairy tale and more like a bleak folktale whispered to keep you…
Category: Film
Movies
Kuroneko (1968) – Review
Kaneto Shindō’s Kuroneko (aka Black Cat) is a ghost story whispered in moonlight, where revenge prowls softly through the reeds and bamboo. It’s a film of elegant restraint; lyrical, haunted, and beautifully strange, less an outburst of horror than a quiet dirge for the cruelty of men. Think Onibaba with fewer holes and more spectral…
Kwaidan (1964) – Review
Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan is one of those rare horror films that feels less like a movie and more like a spell. Four eerie tales unfold in ravishing colour and painterly compositions, each drawn from Lafcadio Hearn’s Japanese ghost stories. It’s an anthology drenched in atmosphere, but less blood and thunder, more moonlight and melancholy, proof…
Belle (2021) – Review
Somewhere between a fairy tale, a therapy session, and a full-on digital spectacle, Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle manages to be both dazzling and emotionally raw. It borrows the bones of Beauty and the Beast and then wires them into a glowing, algorithm-driven world where identity is fluid and trauma has a username. The result is messy,…
The Haunted Palace (1963) – Review
Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace is a slice of H. P. Lovecraft shot through an Edgar Allan Poe lens. It’s gothic, it’s spooky, and it’s got just enough B-movie weirdness to make you grin through the fog. This is the kind of movie where the atmosphere does most of the heavy lifting—because the plot sure…