Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up And Scold Myself With Tea (1977)


As this film was made in Czechoslovakia during the Communist dictatorship, I went in assuming I would miss most of the cultural references within. I have some limited knowledge of Russian Science Fiction of that era, especially Solaris and Stalker, so I know that the genre was often deeply metaphorical, but comedy tends to hinge on the context of its time. I left feeling that I knew nothing more about that part of that then nation’s history, but with a deep awareness that some films are just damn funny and fun to watch.
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The Butcher Boy (1997) is quality Irish strange

The tagline for this is “The antisocial son of an alcoholic father and a bipolar mother grows up in 1960s Ireland”, so forgive me if that and the colour grade on the promo photos meant I went in thinking this would be some overly earnest misery-porn. What we have here is some high-quality bait-and-switch weirdness that simply has to be explored. And, yes, a bit of 60s Ireland misery-porn. Continue reading

A Warning To The Curious (1972)


It may surprise modern folks, but the reason that A Christmas Carol did so well when first released by Charles Dickins was because it tapped into a grand tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time. So it’s probably of no surprise that the BBCs decision to commission a run of ghost stories for Festive viewings in the 70s was less to do with providing an alternative to bawdy light-entertainment and more to do with maintaining Victorian values. So it’s educational horror, beyond the usual anatomy lessons.
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Returner (2002)

Ever since James Cameron asked the eternal question, “can I get away with ripping off an episode of The Outer Limits?”, time travel movies have followed a fairly set rote; man comes back from apocalypse, finds Partner/Scientist/Chosen One/Tits McGuffin, fights things through a combination of True Guts and Slow-Motion, and saves the day/saves the future/sets up a time-paradox you can drive a lorry through. So, after picking up and reading the back of the 2002 Takashi Yamazaki directed Returner, I was expecting more of the same but with a bit of gun-fu.
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