Little Black Riding Hood / The Walls: two very different early shorts by Piotr Dumala
Piotr Dumala, “Little Black Riding Hood / Czarny Kapturek” (1983) Piotr Dumala, “The Walls / Sciany” (1988) Based on the familiar childhood story but rendered in…
Horror
Two comedy horror shorts by Martin Scorsese about self-destructive compulsions and obsessions
Martin Scorsese, “What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?” (1963) Martin Scorsese, “The Big Shave” (1967) Two hilarious short films from Martin…
Põrgu (Hell): good versus evil in homage to a 20th century Estonian surrealist artist
Rein Raamat, “Põrgu (Hell)” (1983) While watching “Wax or the Discovery of Television among the Bees”, I noticed that Thronoi the Bear who had uploaded this…
Multi-media Presentations, North American Films
Wax or the Discovery of Television among the Bees: a moral and political film under the visual overload
David Blair, “Wax or the Discovery of Television among the Bees” (1991) One of my favourite science fiction films since I first saw it in the…
The Birds (dir. Alfred Hitchcock): psychological study of sexual / cultural repression
Alfred Hitchcock, “The Birds” (1963) Based on a 1952 short story by English writer Daphne du Maurier – one of Hitchcock’s favourite sources for film plots…
Prophets of Science Fiction (Episode 1: Mary Shelley): conservative message about scientific responsibility delivered
Declan Whitebloom, “Prophets of Science Fiction (Episode 1: Mary Shelley)” (2011) This episode revolves around Mary Godwin-Shelley’s famous novel “Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus” and the…
Aragami: rather bland action bromance film about how appearances can’t be trusted
Ryuhei Kitamura, “Aragami” (2003) The Japan Foundation Office across the road from where I work put on a week’s worth of Japanese films during the April…
28 Weeks Later: film has more Swiss-cheese holes than the zombies make in their victims
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, “28 Weeks Later” (2007) On paper it looked like a good idea: a sequel to the original zombies-on-the-run flick “28 Days Later” by…
Sleep Tight My Baby: one take is all it takes for an effective horror short
Pansu Kim, “Sleep Tight My Baby” (2001) Very devastating film about a teenage girl trapped with a baby and quarrelling parents filmed in one continuous take; much…
French and French-language Films
Les Jeux des Anges: blackly humorous indictment of concentration camps and police-state societies
Walerian Borowczyk, “Les Jeux des Anges” (1964) So far the strangest film I have seen from Borowczyk, “Les Jeux …” at first doesn’t appear to have…