100 Film Reviews

Dario Argento's Inferno (1980) is forty years old and still seems fresh to me! So, I've written a retrospective review of what is one of my favourite horror films of all-time - which is only fitting to mark the 100th review I've penned for the online movie magazine, Frame Rated.

I can still clearly recall writing my first review for the (free to read) top-notch cinema and television review site... that was back in 2017 and it doesn't seem like nearly three years ago since I enjoyed a re-watch of John Woo's action movie game-changer, Face/Off (1997) ...fantastic fun watching Nicolas Cage and John Travolta trying to out-act each other!

I tend to write fairly in-depth, long-form reviews, usually around 2,000 words, though some are considerably longer... Which means they add up to over 200,000 words... That's equivalent to a few novel-length books! About three book's worth of writing in the time it's taken me to write... well, three books, as it happens!

(In case you didn't know - parts one, two and three of This are out now - scroll down previous posts ↓ to find out more and, during UK Schools Closure 2020, you can read part one as a Freebook on the Medium platform HERE.)

It's only when you look back on things as a writer, that you realise that every word set next to its neighbour to grow into a sentence that works with the next sentence to create mood, milieu or meaning, has almost alchemically combined to tell a story, to flow toward a conclusion, to build a body of work. Writing is certainly a kind of magic, a distillation of thoughts, memories and time...

So, perhaps, like me, you are in corona lockdown? Considering what movie to watch next? Have a scroll though my back-catalogue of film reviews at Frame Rated - there's a good range of classics, dating back to the 1920s, right up to current releases. If you love cinema, you may well enjoy them - I work quite hard at the research stage and endeavor to include info and observations you won't easily find elsewhere... Pretty much any genre you like will be at least touched upon - there are Westerns, Noir, War, Martial Arts, Mystery, Suspense, Action, Thriller, Comedy, Courtroom Drama, Historical Epic, Art-House, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror!

... and then, check-out all the other great film writing at Frame Rated... which celebrates its 5th online anniversary this year, in June.

...and here's my 100th review:

Since his directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Dario Argento became known as a prominent proponent of the Italian giallo. Except for the historical satire, The Five Days (1973), his first five films and two television shorts all helped to define and consolidate this important new sub-genre. Their domestic box-office success earned him a degree of celebrity in his Italian homeland, where he also became known as a director who enjoyed challenging expectations and playing with established tropes—even those he’d established himself. But, it wasn’t until he broke away from giallo with his first full-blooded supernatural horror that he gained any substantial international traction.

On the strength of its Italian success, the US distribution rights for Suspiria (1977) were snapped-up by 20th Century Fox. They immediately ran into resistance from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), who refused it certification. It was unlike anything they’d seen before and the explicit, though artfully balletic, murder scenes were deemed gratuitously violent. Fox decided to distance themselves from it and resubmitted it through International Classics, their subsidiary company dealing with foreign and arthouse fare. After trimming eight-minutes of the more extreme gore, they were granted an R-rating and, although it wasn’t released until August, it ended up being Fox’s seventh highest-grossing release of 1977. Of course, their biggest movie that year was Star Wars!

...continue reading at Frame Rated


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Incidentally, my latest long-read article for Folklore Thursday also published this week and you can read that HERE :