Author Archives: thehipsterllama

Akira Kurosawa is today, correctly remembered as an artist. His meditations on morality, mortality, and identity like Ikiru, Ran, and Kagemusha: Shadow Warrior are correctly hailed as visual feasts rich with themes and lessons that are timeless. It’s important to remember though that it was Rashomon that first broke Kurosawa internationally, although some of hisContinue reading “Yojimbo (1961), Kurosawa Aiming Squarely for Thrills and Hitting the Mark”

There seems to be an influx at the moment onto streaming services of really interesting genre inflected movies, that start out as one thing and go to very different places as they go on, and I seem to be reviewing them all. It started out with Netflix’s ‘Horse Girl’, continued with Shudder’s ‘Bliss’, and isContinue reading “The Girl on the Third Floor – or, How Toxic Masculinity Haunts Capitalism”

Abel Ferrara’s exploitation, arthouse, trash masterpiece, ‘The Diller Killer’, starts with the title card; “THIS FILM SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD”. The film goes on to match up to this promise, telling the story of a man driven insane by his artistic inertia and the punk-metal band playing in the flat beneath his until he startsContinue reading “Bliss – A Delirious & Original Vision”

I knew from the opening moments that I loved ‘Little Joe’, that it had its hooks in me. We see these strange blue plants through this kaleidoscopically moving observation camera that calls to mind Gaspar Noe on Xanax. That kind of bold but restrained filmmaking will go on to define what works quite so exceptionallyContinue reading “Little Joe – An Electrifying Sci-Fi Thriller”

‘Horse Girl’ is such a strange beast, (ha). It begins as something quite straightforward, a story of a strange girl living a desperately normal life. Early montages show with beautiful observation the bland charm of a hundred midwestern small talks. Alison Brie co-writes and stars as Sarah, a salesman at a crafts store who hasContinue reading “Horse Girl – Slightly Less Than The Fascinating Sum Of Its Parts”