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[Revised transcription of the video essay Angst Through the Ages: Nate Roscoe on the Chokehold of the Serial Killer on 20th Century Cinema, featured on Umbrella Entertainment’s UHD/Blu-ray Collector’s Edition of Angst (1983); issued October 2025.] H ave you ever come face to face with a killer? Have you peered into the marred pupils of…

[Relax. Ye shall find no major spoilers here.] H ype. What a devil it can be. As a moviegoer, few experiences sting like exiting a screening room afflicted with the burn of disappointment, your media-moulded anticipation marooned amongst a carpeted tide of spilled popcorn and stale 7UP. As a critic, that visceral aversion can mutate…

T hick clouds of cold, obsidian dread permeate The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Sky’s six-part reworking of the multi-million bestseller by Heather Morris: they loom disquietingly in the first frames and grow steadily more noxious through five-and-a-bit brutal hours, inching across the screen with the malign determination of black mould. As ‘Lali’ Sokolov—the real Holocaust survivor…

[Meg 2: The Trench is currently playing in cinemas worldwide.] H oly megalodon! Just when you thought it was safe to give this floundering franchise a wide berth, along swims Meg 2: The Trench: a follow-up so bloated, so utterly and defiantly absurd, it would be remiss of me not to recognise its chowderheaded charms….

T odd Solondz knows how to write women. Years before the film industry came to its senses and realised the value in putting ladies of all colours, body types, age brackets, and degrees of distinction into quality top-billed parts, the misanthropic auteur was gifting juicy, vividly drawn characters to fascinating faces like Heather Matarazzo (Welcome…

Video Essay [For best results, choose highest quality / fullscreen.]

J uly 27th, 2007: twenty-five days after her milestone 21st birthday, Lindsay Lohan’s latest star vehicle—the intriguingly titled, mid-budget brainfuck I Know Who Killed Me—was laid bare upon 1,320 North American screens. In a statement issued to gutter rag TMZ almost a month to the day afterward, the erstwhile Disney princess candidly declared: “I am addicted…

V ery few performers nail neurosis like Julianne Moore. Between her stupefying embodiment of a housewife on the brink in Todd Haynes’ terrific Safe (1995), tightly-wound turns in a sprawling pair of PT Andersons (Boogie Nights, 1997; Magnolia, 1999), the contemptible social climber at the core of Tom Kalin’s Savage Grace (2007), a nuanced metamorphosis of…

[Candy is currently available to stream on Hulu in the U.S. Other territories to be confirmed.] T he notion of a “perfect crime” might well be best suited to the lurid pages of hard-boiled pulp fiction, but if ever a bona fide baddie has gotten away with murder, it’s Candy Montgomery. Accused of thwacking to…

[The screenplay excerpts contained herein are my own creation; it was not my intent to imitate the work of Brian De Palma/Robert J. Avrech—I have not read their script for Body Double.] A great set piece is to the suspense film what fresh air is to oxygen: imperative. More so than story, dialogue, or performance,…