Lucio Fulci’s Zombie is an outlandish-tropical-gut-gobbling-eye-gouging-gorefest-extravaganza that is simultaneously a shining example of how to create the perfect atmosphere and tone for a horror film. Italian horror cinema from 1960 to around 1985 is an absolute gold mine of madness from a group of directors who used extreme filmmaking techniques to get their message across; Lucio Fulci being at the top of his class. His movies are an exercise in excess and environment, cleverly melding the two to create some of…

Effortlessly tackling some of the most difficult and taboo subjects in existence, Through a Glass Darkly is a film that forces us to reflect on both our own personal experiences as well as those of the people in the film. It examines topics like personal and intergenerational mental illness, religion, sexual frustration, suicide, incest, regret, life and death and more with a delicate hand that could only be attached to Ingmar Bergman. While I couldn’t shake the truly heartbreaking chain of…

I think this is one of the harshest films I’ve ever seen. It simply does not relent, it is strange and maddening from start to finish and feels very different from anything else being made at the time. Keanu Reeves gives the performance of his career in River’s Edge; a film about a group of rambunctious teenagers, one of whom strangles his girlfriend late one night for basically no reason. When he informs his friends of the slaying, they have…

Tenebre is my favorite of Dario Argento’s films, and I’ve seen the majority of his work. Most people I talk to name Suspiria or even Deep Red (both fantastic in their own right) as their favorites but for me, this is the one. Hyper-stylized in every aspect from the violence and gore effects, to the camerawork, lighting and set design, Argento creates a world of macabre splendor. Bright lights, phones of every color and excessive amounts of blood make for a…

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Blind Chance is a spiritual journey about the relationship between chance and freedom in a persons life along with what is utterly inescapable. We witness three different variants of the same event in the life of a young student named Witek as he attempts to catch a train to Warsaw while on leave from his studies after the passing of his late father. With each scenario, the viewer is shown a distinctly contrasting fate that befalls Witek. In…

Rooted in Luchino Visconti’s style of stark
Italian neorealism, Rocco and His Brothers is a sprawling epic about the slow disintegration of a family who move from the small rural town of Lucania in Southern Italy to the city of Milan. Unlike Visconti’s earlier works, this film morphs from a piece of kitchen sink realism into a tense and often violent melodrama that was actually very controversial upon its release, and was even seized by authorities at the personal behest of…