@synth_cinema

Review Roundup - Squirm

RESIDENT EVIL (2026)

Like their video game namesake the Resident Evil movie series has been through a lot of rough patches. But unlike the original Capcom franchise, which went downhill after entering an action heavy phase, the films derived from it started bad and only got worse. Some viewers were sated by what was essentially a jumble of post-The Matrix action, 3D effects, and key jangling references, which meant that plenty of money was made despite the lack of internal logic and quality control. Subsequent attempts to revive the name for streaming didn't fare any better despite the games themselves making a course correction. Is this new iteration more of the same?

HCF Review - Blood Brothers

A BETTER TOMORROW (1986)

John Woo’s first foray into ‘heroic bloodshed’, might be considered low-key in comparison to his later, more pyrotechnical, films. But the movie has something; a certain immediacy, an undeniable cool factor that’s obvious right away. Releasing in an explosion of new ideas, months after both Police Story and Yes Madam, there’s just a kind of magic about it thanks to a combination of wardrobe choices, editing, and music. While the (highly entertaining) sequel is an outrageous affair with a gigantic body count and a verbal tirade about a plate of rice, the first chapter is less about spectacle and melodrama. So let’s go back the original classic; it’s A Better Tomorrow.

HCF Review - Jigoku

BOHACHI BUSHIDO: CODE OF THE FORGOTTEN EIGHT (1973)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before; an enigmatic warrior arrives in a strange town and is enlisted by a nefarious local outfit to do the dirty work of a scheming villain… but his personal ideals interfere with the business at hand. The world of Samurai movies (and indeed Westerns) offers plenty of examples of this story. Which means a fresh take requires a certain kind of flair, or interesting take on the formula, to make it memorable. In this particular case Teruo Ishii’s vision is to take the material from an adult manga (from the writers of Lone Wolf and Cub) and fill much of the film’s running time with nudity and torture. Are the results a case of style (and sadism) over substance?

HCF Review - NeverEnding Story

EXIT 8 (2025)

With recent trends in both low budget ‘liminal space’ horror shorts and Japanese time loop stories, such as River, it’s perhaps unsurprising that someone took both and combined them into a single thriller. This is also a video-game adaptation that has a small scale premise to work with resulting in a film that doesn’t have much room to go wildly off target like so many others. But when the original horror-meets-walking-simulator is a breezy experience that lasts minutes, rather than hours, can an entire movie be consistently engaging? Let’s examine whether this micro concept, mostly in a single location, can maintain the suspense factor.

HCF Review - The Wanderers

ADRIFT IN TOKYO (2007)

A tale of desperate loners, debt collectors, and even potential murder, isn’t exactly the sort of fare that is typically considered easy watching. But Satoshi Miki’s meandering hangout movie Adrift in Tokyo is anything but typical. Rather than being something like the gruelling Yakuza pictures one of its stars has appeared in this is more a strange and melancholy drama. It’s slow paced instead of gripping; punctuated by occasional moments of slapstick rather than violence. Can such a laid-back movie with a resounding lack of thrill power be engaging or even thought provoking?

HCF Review - The Getaway

ONCE A THIEF (1991)

Discussions of John Woo’s classic run in the late 1980s to early 1990s often omit this caper, but unlike Bullet in the Head it’s not a case of it being too bleak. Plus the stars are all here; Leslie Cheung and Chow Yun-Fat return from the Better Tomorrow films, as do several other familiar faces. So are the locations the director enjoys; this time Paris. Perhaps it’s because the whole thing has a tendency to get rather silly. Some of the lead characters are named after desserts and Violet Lam’s score is very whimsical after all. The explosive set pieces are present and correct, however, there’s something off about the construction of the story itself that goes beyond some of the strange tonal shifts. Is it more than the sum of these parts?

Review Roundup - Gods and Monsters

THE ODYSSEY (2026)

Like The Dark Knight there's a sense that some of the material in Homer's epic, and its predecessor The Iliad, could have a tendency to become rather silly. There are a lot of choices to unpack in Christopher Nolan's modernist (or perhaps minimalist) adaptation but the way he's decided to depict certain ideas and images is one of the biggest. He must have considered this one of the central problems; that a giant wooden horse, much like the caped crusader, is hard to take seriously. Going full swords and sandals fantasy camp was never on the cards so the results aren't entirely surprising. However, there's still plenty to enjoy in the resulting epic.

HCF Review - Gold Rush

BULLET IN THE HEAD (1990)

Of all John Woo’s Hong Kong projects this is probably the most overlooked, perhaps because it doesn’t star Chow Yun-fat, or perhaps because of its sometimes gruelling nature. The behind the scenes story is well known but after a disagreement with producer Tsui Hark about a third A Better Tomorrow the pair went their separate ways. The official third movie is best described as tepid; mistaking slow-motion for style. Bullet in the Head on the other hand is a bleak and blistering assault on the senses that uses its Vietnam scenery tell a nihilistic tale of brotherhood gone awry. Perhaps it’s just a metaphor for the end of a film-making partnership.

Horror Bites - Man Yells at Cloud

NOPE (2022)

Nope is a weird movie. In a complementary sense; a long forgotten review of Get Out on this blog suggested that it should have been more unnerving and also funnier. Which is an oddly specific complaint that has been addressed here. The characters are more eccentric, the tone is more peculiar, and the horror moments are much stranger. Which is saying something when the overall vibe of the movie is a sci-fi adventure borrowing from UFO films as well as Jaws and other influences. But with all this going on does the film as a whole manage to be compelling beyond the sum of its parts?

Review Roundup - Eye of the Tiger

SEND HELP (2026)

Time for a double helping of people surviving dire situations and overcoming certain doom. In the case of Send Help the ideal version of this story was already told in Hell in the Pacific; pitting an unlikely duo stranded on an island against each other. However, this is also the return of Sam Raimi who hasn't directed anything fun for very a long time. The couple of misfires after 2009's Drag Me To Hell don't really count and perhaps he agrees; teaming up with Rachel McAdams from Doctor Strange and giving her something more interesting to do. Let's see if it works and whether the old Evil Dead magic is still present and correct...

HCF Review - Déjà Vu

RIVER (2023)

While Junta Yamaguchi’s Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes asked what someone might do if they could see (a very short time) into the future, this later project asks what might happen if that same amount of time kept repeating itself. Taking the concept from Groundhog Day and shrinking it down so much doesn’t seem like a great idea. How can there even be enough room to tell a story and what could it really have to say? However, by combing this micro-scale with a group of characters who all become trapped in the experience it does something both familiar and fresh with the premise.

HCF Review - Summer Daze

SUMMER TIME MACHINE BLUES (2005)

Time travel stories exist in a variety of formats whether they’re deadly serious or farcical, but sometimes it’s fun to sit back and enjoy a story with low stakes. In this case the rather silly tone disguises a well planned time-warp adventure, even if the story revolves around some kids trying to kill time during a heatwave. However, the plot is in the realm of something like Twelve Monkeys where the timeline is set rather than Back to the Future (which gets name dropped). The results might not be as tightly scripted as its successor Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes but it’s highly enjoyable, so let’s take a look at why.

HCF Review - Bullet Ballet

HARD BOILED (1992)

‘John Woo is… God,’ claims an old trailer for his final Hong Kong action movie. The quotes used almost manage to capture the madness that is Hard Boiled, a crime thriller from a master at the zenith of his powers, which is also described as ‘more exciting than a dozen Die Hards‘. But look again and you’ll find that this hyperbole is correct; the results are an exaggerated exercise in action cinema. After the caper Once a Thief Woo would return to the genre he helped create to give us his magnum opus. It would be the distillation of everything that had come before, showcasing his fascination with meticulously staged gun battles and brotherhood. Ideas of loyalty and corruption would be explored one more time, while giving the forces of law and order a chance to be the heroes.

Review Roundup - Planes, Trains...

SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE (2025)

Time for an unexpected (but welcome) surprise in the form of a sequel to the Finnish action flick Sisu. Was this even advertised? The box office takings, much like 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, suggest not. The theatrical screenings were also limited which doesn't exactly help matters. Maybe they should have just stuck a 'Part 2' on the title and saved themselves some trouble. Still, the immortal, aka Korpi, aka Sisu if you like, he's back! Can the simple race across a 1940s wasteland for a stash of gold be done again? Is the 'same but different' approach always the best idea?

HCF Review - Turf Wars

BROTHER (2000)

There are a lot of Japanese gangster films out there for those looking for a particular blend of loyalty and bloodshed. Directors like Kinji Fukasaku and Seijun Suzuki will be an essential part of any Yakuza fan’s movie night rotation, as will images of seedy hostess clubs and severed fingers. It’s a path worth taking for both the staple ingredients and those elements which make one film-maker’s style distinct from another. Which brings us to this thriller from Takeshi Kitano. Released a decade into his directing career it’s more a ‘greatest hits’ movie rather than something fresh. Does it have more style and character than the typical stories in this genre?

Review Roundup - Danse Macabre

28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE (2026)

While the previous instalment of 28 Years Later was very experimental in a technical sense (and subsequently had some swings and misses) there was always a feeling that a sequel might fill some of the narrative gaps. This sort of expectation can be a mistake of course, and often in the horror genre it's a case of diminishing returns. Fortunately in this case, even if the title is rubbish, there are less plot conveniences and child in peril elements. In fact almost all of the story about a boy and his father is absent. Instead things go in another direction while keeping to the family dynamics in a different way.

HCF Review - Selling Out

CLOUD (2024)

It’s time to head back into the woods for another strange tale of ambition and chaos. However, unlike it’s partner in this set, Charisma, this is less of a philosophical tale and more a straightforward crime drama. Which is to say it’s about as straightforward as you might expect from Kiyoshi Kurosawa by now. There are still many darkly comedic moments and surreal images, but the overall genre is more definitive. Coming more than twenty years later does the story have similar musings on the nature of obsession? Let’s examine how this release, an exclusive to this set, stacks up as an eclectic double feature.

HCF Review - Into the Wild

CHARISMA (1999)

Since certain ventures into the realm of Japanese cinema have been an assault on the senses recently, it’s time to take a look at something on the other end of the spectrum. While there are moments of both dark comedy and creeping dread, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Charisma is more of a mood movie than a thriller; a strange and contemplative affair, often picturesque and often slow moving. Still, in terms of a narrative there’s still plenty of bizarre and enigmatic events to consider. It’s an intriguing experience to say the least but is it a crime story, an ecological drama, or just a mushroom fuelled trip into the wilderness?

HCF Review - PIN...

964 PINOCCHIO (1991)

The realm of extreme cinema can pose of lot of unusual questions, but in the case of 964 Pinocchio it’s mainly ‘how much is too much?’ How much convulsing and puking does it take to compete with Zulawski’s Possession? How many weird metaphors will it take to top the work of Shinya Tsukamoto? The director, Shozin Fukui, worked on the latter in the late 1980s and clearly had these references in mind when putting together this gruelling mixture of guerilla film-making and cyberpunk nightmare fuel. Clearly his instinct was that more is more, so let’s take a look at how much of the final product works as a story.

Monster Bites - Shellshock

GAMERA THE BRAVE (2006)

The 1990s trilogy concluded with the idea that Gamera would continue to fight on against his usual enemies. However, after distribution of part three went to Toho, the Godzilla owners, Daiei dissolved and became part of Kadokawa Studios. Seven years passed and they oversaw a series reboot much like the Godzilla films. Which could have been fruitful; the series might have benefited from looser continuity a new ideas. Unfortunately, this is Gamera's last big screen appearance and the only movie from this new era thanks to its commercial failure. Is it a disaster or is this just because it wasn't the anticipated part four?

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