The 20 Best Films from The Golden Age of Japanese Cinema

rashomon

The 1950s are considered the Golden Age of Japanese cinema. The aftermath of World War II and particularly the atomic bomb, and the subsequent American occupation left the country scarred, but filled with inspiration and eagerness to start over. As the Japanese economy started to rise once more, five major studios emerged that shaped Japanese […]

The 30 Best J-Horror Films of All Time

audition

Probably the genre of Japanese cinema that has produced the most well-known contemporary Japanese films, J-horror brought to the forefront the style and aesthetics of the country, which have been somewhat forgotten after the V-cinema era. In the process, franchises that are still present were created, with their impact reaching Hollywood, which produced a number […]

Pulling Focus: Johnny Guitar (1954)

johnny-guitar

“Johnny Guitar is surely one of the most blatant psychosexual melodramas ever to disguise itself in that most commodious of genres, the Western.” – Roger Ebert   Anyone can play guitar “I’m gonna kill you,” spits a venomous Emma Small, played with evil élan by Mercedes McCambridge, to the legendary Joan Crawford (Forsaking All Others, […]

The 10 Best Modern Scandinavian Horror Movies

let the right one in

Generally, there is little to no focus on Scandinavian horror movies, and usually for a good reason. The movies are few enough, and there is far enough between them for the mainstream-international audience to simply not notice them. However, for the few good Scandinavian horror movies that exists, they are quite versatile. The sub-genres they […]

10 Great Movies That Deconstructed Their Genre

natural born killers

Genre theory in many ways can be illustrated as a series of blue prints, aimed at understanding the reasoning for categorization in narrative story-telling. In filmmaking, studying these outlines helps identify common themes used, and why they are persistently reimagined in certain modes of story-telling. Some filmmakers will attempt to navigate around cliches in order […]

The 25 Best Erotic Thrillers of All Time

For whatever reasons, perhaps owing to puritanical societal views and an uptight body politic, films that detail eroticism are thought to be trashy, bottom of the barrel undertakings with little to offer beyond the cheapest of tawdry thrills. But boundary-pushing films needn’t all be about T and A and little else. Why some of the […]