See cinema differently
Director: Adam Wingard Stars: Sharni Vinson, Barbara Crampton, Amy Seimetz Rumbling out of the mumblecore movement (or a splinter of it dedicated to horror referred to as, wait for it, mumblegore), writer/director partnership Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard have caught some limelight recently for their work in short film, providing notable sections for the V/H/S movies …
Year: 1979 Director: Werner Herzog Stars: Klaus Kinski (Count Dracula), Isabelle Adjani (Lucy Harker), Bruno Ganz (Jonathon Harker), Roland Topor (Renfield), Walter Ladengast (Dr. Van Helsing) Genre: Horror In 1976 Werner Herzog reportedly had his actors hypnotised for their performances in his somnambulist movie Heart Of Glass. But for his 1979 remake of F.W. Murnau's silent masterpiece …
Continue reading "Why I Love… #53: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht"
Director: Neill Blomkamp Stars: Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Matt Damon The year is 2154. Earth is overpopulated and under-resourced. Los Angeles looks like a cross between a war zone and a never-ending shanty town. The poor are the population. Up above, orbiting the Earth, the rich minority live in comfort aboard space station Elysium; a …
Directors: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman Stars: Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone When I flippantly used the word "upskirt" in a piece about Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift, it became the top search that led people to this blog. A test a couple of weeks ago to see if the word "creampie" would have a …
Director: Abbas Kiarostami Stars: Rin Takanashi, Ryo Kase, Tadashi Okuno Like Someone In Love, the latest film from Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, opens at a trendy-looking nightspot in Tokyo. The camera remains static inside the busy establishment as we hear a woman talking on the phone. We peer into the scene, trying to distinguish who …
Director: Goro Miyazaki Goro Miyazaki, son of Studio Ghibli's grand master Hayao Miyazaki, has been unfairly wearing the millstone of Tales Of Earthsea around his neck for over half a decade now. Earthsea was not a bad movie, but with the expectation that comes from passing the torch to a family member, coupled with Ghibli's explosion in …
Year: 2009 Director: Ti West Stars: Jocelin Donahue (Samantha), Greta Gerwig (Megan), Tom Noonan (Mr Ulman), Mary Woronov (Mrs Ulman), AJ Bowen (Victor Ulman), Dee Wallace (Landlady) Genre: Horror In theory The House Of The Devil shouldn't work. In theory, this is the kind of walk down misery lane that plagues modern horror, keying into past glories …
Not everything is always about movies here at thelosthighwayhotel. Some stuff's about TV. TV, especially American TV, is increasingly indistinguishable in quality from feature films. True, there's still an awful lot of dross out there, but over the last 20 years or so we've seen TV aspire to greater things. Indeed, the serial drama offers …
Director: Declan Lowney Stars: Steve Coogan, Felicity Montagu, Colm Meaney Upgrading a TV character or show to feature film status is often a tricky if not misguided affair, especially in the realms of comedy. Fundamentally the two formats serve different functions, and where half an hour of something can be just about right, 90+ minutes …
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn Stars: Ryan Gosling, Vithaya Pansringarm, Kristen Scott Thomas First thing's first, and a crucial caveat for Only God Forgives; this is not Drive 2. Whatever you may think based on the advertising campaign, or whatever you may be wishing for, this is not that movie. Give up on that one for the …
Director: Dean Parisot Stars: Mary-Louise Parker, Bruce Willis, John Malkovich Red was fun. Something of a sleeper hit, it managed to travel by word-of-mouth, offering light-hearted action backed with a spitfire script and some very appealing characters. Evidently it did enough business to make a sequel commercially viable, which ought to be good news for …
Director: James Wan Stars: Lili Taylor, Ron Livingston, Patrick Wilson Putting aside for a minute the barrel-scraping title (which sounds like the name of a filler episode of Angel), the new movie from James Wan offers little inspiration up front. From the trailer, which has been doing the rounds rather heavily, it looks like a predictable …
The Lost Highway Hotel 