Deep Cut

Alistair Harkness Alistair Harkness

Stand Alone

Shane Meadows’ Dead Man’s Shoes remains one of the few British genre films to pack a distinctive cinematic punch — so why can its influence be seen almost nowhere?

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Alistair Harkness Alistair Harkness

Method Winner

The last great scene in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull is also its most culturally significant — and its legacy can be seen in the new film Reality.

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Alistair Harkness Alistair Harkness

Remaining Men

Among the many insane, deranged, inflammatory and down-right wrong-headed critiques of David Fincher’s Fight Club, both then and now, perhaps the rawest and most scathing came from Fincher contemporary Paul Thomas Anderson…

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Alistair Harkness Alistair Harkness

Acting Gem

Jamie Lee Curtis’s recent Oscar victory shout-out to the genre fans who’ve supported her over the years was a reminder that great work is being done all the time in movies that rarely register on the radars of awards voters…

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Alistair Harkness Alistair Harkness

Cancel Culture

I’m not overly invested in the machinations of the various Marvel and DC cinematic universes. I have my favourites, sure, but do I care if each studio’s respective movies perfectly sync up to form a cohesive whole ten years from now? I do not…

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Alistair Harkness Alistair Harkness

British Invasion

Steven Soderbergh’s always had a love affair with British culture. It’s also at the heart of his best film…

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Alistair Harkness Alistair Harkness

Discomfort Zone

When he’s not doling out cinematic punishment in the form of gonzo biblical tales like Noah and Mother!, Darren Aronofksy occupies what I like to think of as a cinematic discomfort zone full of characters who manifest their pain and sadness in the body blows they deal themselves…

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Alistair Harkness Alistair Harkness

Reel Emotion

When it comes to films about filmmaking The Fabelmans makes it clear why Steven Spielberg is Steven Spielberg and not some hack trying to demonstrate his love of movies with another redux version of Cinema Paradiso…

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Alistair Harkness Alistair Harkness

Oscar Gold Rush

I’ve got a love/hate relationship with the Oscars. I don’t really care about them, but I don’t not care about them either…

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Alistair Harkness Alistair Harkness

The Old and the New

Backtrack to October 2001 and I’m sitting in a Manhattan cinema watching Martin Scorsese introduce the first ever publicly screened footage from his dream project Gangs of New York. The movie has just been delayed on account of 9/11, but Scorsese is telling a story about the day George Lucas visited the set…

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