They were called “video nasties” — those 1980s slasher flicks and splatter films filled with sexual violence, graphic depictions of murder and gallons of Caro syrup that, for a brief moment, were considered the root of all evil in Thatcher-era Britain. For years, some of the genre’s most extreme examples, …
Read More »'The Climb': The Story Behind the Indie Buddy Comedy of the Year
When it comes to The Climb, filmmakers/real-life movie bros Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin have learned to expect any and all reactions. For one, Covino received what he calls a “lovely email” from Tom Hanks after he saw the award-winning indie dramedy (he has a small role in Hanks’ …
Read More »'Martin Eden': A Young Man's Literary Journey, A Cinematic Knockout
It feels like some lost Italian masterpiece from the 1970s. unearthed from a locked vault after decades of gathering dust and slotted into the middle of a late De Sica/ mid-period Francesco Rosi triple feature. The score borrows bits of classical music, Sixties Euro-pop and Eighties Italo-disco — perfect for …
Read More »'Black Christmas': A Slasher-Film Remake Updates Its Premise and Strikes Back
There’s a distinct daughters-of-Carol-Clover vibe in the new remake of Black Christmas that hits you almost immediately — a kind of knowingness with a serrated edge that’s different from the meta-winks of something like Scream, or the in-joke camaraderie that happens when horror franchise entries start getting into the double …
Read More »Terry Gilliam on the Madness of Don Quixote
It’s been 30 years since Terry Gilliam first dreamt of making a movie about the foolish, windmill-chasing knight Don Quixote — and it’s been roughly 29 years since it became his nightmare. As the tragicomic documentary Lost in La Mancha proved, Gilliam’s Quixote picture is the dictionary definition of a …
Read More »'Babylon' Rising: The Resurrection of a Controversial U.K. Reggae Movie
There’s a scene in Babylon, the 1980 cult classic considered by many to be the great U.K. reggae movie, where a bunch of Brixton residents gather together in a rehearsal space. It’s the meeting place for their up-and-coming sound system, named Ital Lion; one of them has just procured a …
Read More »A Candid Conversation With Richard E. Grant
Richard E. Grant has seen a few things in his 61 years. He was raised in the then-British colony of Swaziland. He went to school with Mandela’s daughters. He lay silent in the back seat of a car on an African dirt road as his mother screwed a man who …
Read More »Revisiting Hours: Crime, Cronenberg, Collusion and 'Eastern Promises'
Every Friday, we’re recommending an older movie that’s available to stream or download and worth seeing again through the lens of our current moment. We’re calling the series “Revisiting Hours” — consider this Rolling Stone’s unofficial film club. This week: Keith Phipps on David Cronenberg‘s pre-Putin evil-Russian crime-thriller Eastern Promises. …
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