Articles and Lists

For all the joy and frivolity of the festive period, film has always had a tendency to show the darker side of the holiday. From Dead of Night and Mon Oncle Antoine, to the mournful Meet Me in St. Louis and emotionally raw It’s a Wonderful Life, Christmas at the cinema can be pretty bleak. The Apartment may not be full of snow, reindeer, and Father Christmas, but like many other Christmas films it looks at the loneliness that can...

Christmas is the season of giving, when people come together and rejoice in each other’s company. So, what better way to spend your pre-Christmas Friday than in the company of three loathsome characters, whose sense of cheer comes at the expense of others and to watch them slowly descend into a black hole of greed, selfishness and murder? This week’s Forgotten Film Friday marks the immaculate conception of a very different, more cinematic Holy Trinity, that of Danny Boyle and...

By Sam Inglis Most of my go to Christmas movies are the same as anyone else’s: It’s A Wonderful Life, Gremlins, Muppet Christmas Carol, Die Hard, Die Hard 2 (it’s underrated, and as much a Christmas movie as the first). Then there’s this. This is the Manos of Christmas movies: It’s terrible, has been on MST3K, and is great fun with or without Joel and the bots making jokes. It’s an irresistibly silly title and, happily, Santa Claus Conquers The...

With family overseas, Christmas time has often meant a fair deal of travel, travel that has always involved international flights. When my family was based in the Middle East, I was often fortunate enough to find myself cozying into a long haul flight on an airline that boasted a great in-flight entertainment system, with a library of films that would put the BFI’s archives to shame. However, when my parents moved to Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan, I had...

“Buddy the Elf, what’s your favourite colour?” I have wanted to answer the telephone and say that to someone ever since I first watched Elf, but considering it would probably make me look like a mad man I haven’t. Instead, I quote it in my head every time someone mentions the film. The line itself is silly – no one needs to answer the phone in that way, but Will Ferrell’s beloved character is just the right side of cheerful...

Coming from director-provocateur Sion Sono, who wrote the script 17 years prior to the film’s production, watching Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is akin to slamming a handful of uppers, chasing them down with a flaming shot of Sambuca, and diving, whilst laughing manically, into a samurai sword swinging mosh-pit. It’s a madcap orgy of violence, a blood soaked delight, and by the time the credits roll you won’t quite know what’s hit you. Why Don’t You Play in...

The days are growing shorter, the nights are drawing in, and the temperature is plummeting. Horror films are an acquired taste, some people love them and some people despise them. I am firmly in the former camp, and happy to be a fully-fledged, card-holding horror fan. This list looks at what I consider to be my favourite horror films of all time, perfect a chilly winter’s night. Of course, as with any Top 5 list it is subjective: I am...

By Michael McNulty Based on a short story written for Playboy by fantasy-horror and sci-fi writer Richard Matheson – perhaps more widely known for his work on The Twilight Zone, and for authoring I Am Legend – Duel began its trajectory towards life as an ABC TV movie of the week when it was picked up by Universal. Steven Spielberg, then in mid-20s and working as a television director, was attached after impressing the film’s executive producer with a rough...

By Sam Inglis Films menace us in many different ways. We’ve been scared by ghosts, by aliens, by monsters, vampires, zombies, demons and supernatural murderers. I like films with all of these threats in them, but the ones that scare me, that truly get under my skin, are serial killer films. Dracula, Pennywise, The Wolfman, Damien, Sadako and Freddy Kruger are all very different threats, but they all have one thing in common: you know they’re not real. When you see...