A Haunting in October: "Kuroneko"

by Nick Taylor

Cats! We love ‘em. I know I do. Are we all cat people? No, but variety is the spice of life. Spirits of wronged women avenging their own deaths? Well loved across all kinds of cultural traditions and generic conventions. Putting cats and wronged women together, then, should be an instant recipe for success, yes? Especially if the title in question is as lauded as Kaneto Shindo’s 1968 film Kuroneko?

Set roughly one millenia before it was filmed, Kuroneko follows two women, mother Yone (Nobuko Otawa) and her daughter-in-law Shige (Kiwako Taichi), who live together in a bamboo cottage on the outskirts of a peasant village...

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First & Last 042

Can you guess the movie from its first and last shot?

The answer (and some Oscar talk) is after the jump...

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Goodbye, Terence Davies (1945-2023)

by Cláudio Alves

A moment ago, I knew exactly what I wanted to say to you. I have run through this letter in my mind so very often and I wanted to compose something eloquent, but the words just don't seem to be there.

So mused Hester Collyer in The Deep Blue Sea, and so I felt this past week, trying to articulate a fitting farewell to Terence Davies and failing to do so, over and over again. Words don't seem enough to describe what the filmmaker meant to me. Suddenly, my limitations as a writer became obvious, heavy on the soul, almost accusatory, for I can't seem to express what cinema lost on October 7th, 2023. It feels too big a calamity to encompass within a measly obituary. At the same time, this bruisedness that conquers me seems foolish, one of those idiocies of celebrity culture. How can I not feel silly for this grief over someone I've never met and will never meet? How can I worry about this considering everything else going on in the world? I don't know, yet I do.

Eloquence and intelligence, sensibility and sense have slipped from my grasp, so vulnerability might have to be the last resource available to confront this text, clumsy as it might seem. At my wit's end, it's all that's left…

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Doc Corner: 'Last Stop Larrimah' and 'Mister Organ' are a return to true crime

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

The popularity of true crime as a subgenre appears to have subsided dramatically in the last couple of years. Following the boom times, it seems following the uber-success of Tiger King, the film, television and podcasting staple has receded somewhat from public consciousness. Although there is no shortage of new titles littering the catalogues of streaming services week on week, two new titles with antipodean links feel like a modest but successful return to the spotlight.

Speaking of Tiger King, the first of these two films is one that appears to very much takes some inspiration from that Floridian nightmare. It does it better, though, I would say.

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"The Exorcist" Prologue: Buzzing Perfection

by Cláudio Alves

Between William Friedkin's death, a special spooky season re-release to celebrate its 50th anniversary, and a new sequel, The Exorcist feels like a hot topic. Then again, the 1973 movie is hard to shake off, even half a century after its original release. Indeed, one can count it among the most influential horrors in film history, a classic whose legacy lives on, scaring, maybe even scarring, generations long after it first shocked audiences. And yet, when discussing it, most people focus on the nightmare of a possessed child and her terrified mother, the doubt-ridden priest who regains his faith confronting evil beyond belief, or perhaps the freezing room where domesticity rots into hell on earth. 

For me, though, the best part of The Exorcist is its prologue, perhaps the picture's most divisive passage…

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