Schlock and Awe

Sometimes you get a cinematic itch.    Sometimes it’s just a single movie, other’s it’s a Director.   It’s more the individual style or flavour a Director or Auteur brings to a movie.   And I for what ever reason or what ever Movie Podcast I was listening to that week, I got the Coen Brothers Itch.   So I started from the beginning. I am working my way through all eighteen movies, Blood Simple to The Ballard of Buster Scruggs.   Some of these movies I watching again,  they are old friends, some are new to me.   It’s going to be an Odyssey of quirky humour, classic characters, folksy music and a deep mythology that Joel and Ethan Coen keep returning to again and again.       Blood Simple (1984) When I watch The Coen’s debut, all I wanted to do is yell ‘I Quit’ to my unimpressed cat and stalk out of the room in pure frustrated envy.   Blood Simple is still one of my favourite Coen Joints, it’s lean mean, and sleazy; well to be fair the sleaze comes purely from M Emmet Walsh in a

The tale of Two Families: Hereditary (2018), Written and Directed by Ari Aster Insidious Chapter 2, Written by Leigh Wannell, Director James Wan In  recent years the term ‘Elevated’ or ‘Social’ Horror has term flung around for a certain kind of Horror Movie.  It’s a difficult term to define.  Is it a more emotionally complex slow burn horror that has been made with the likes of It Follows, The VVitch, and the criminally under seen Doctor Sleep.  Or is it the Horror that people or critics that think is good.  The 2010s is the decade when Get Out and Shape of Water won Oscars, and very deserved ones.  It could be argued that ‘Elevated Horror’ doesn’t really exists, that it’s just it marketing tool. After all studios like A24 and Blumhouse to some extent, have been making their business plan that revolves around more Arthouse and genre blending Horror Movies with something else on their mind is not a new phenomenon, Candy Man, Godzilla, Night of the Living Dead, The Invasion of the Body S