Unpacking the Military Background – War is Hell: Making Hellraiser III

A Book Review by William Blick. In addition to offering a production history, Stewart revisits an underseen and underappreciated contribution to the horror genre, in the military horror tradition.” Niche-genre critic and historian Danny Stewart explores the hybrid-genre entry Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, produced by Clive Barker with Anthony […]

What the World Needs Now: Olivia Wilde on The Invite

By Jonathan Monovich. Now that we spend so much time not speaking to each other in person and relationships have become something filtered through technology, we actually are fascinated by people interacting. I think audiences get a thrill from films about people having to struggle through the complexity of relationships.” […]

The Beauty of Looking: Andrew Haigh’s Queer Television Aesthetic

By David Greven. Moving beyond caricature and never trying to goose the audience, Looking consistently offered quiet, introspective scenes like these that took character development and interaction further while maintaining a consistent style. For these reasons, the series remains a resonant touchstone that entices repeat viewings.” The English director Andrew […]

Roads to Nowhere: Kane Parsons’s Backrooms

By Thomas M. Puhr. Watching a character look around in bewildered awe as they first encounter the backrooms gets old pretty quick. How many times must we see someone gasp as a part of their body disappears into that basement wall?” Splotchy, coagulated gray fills the screen. Is this an […]

In the Weeds: The Divided City and Its New Cinemas, 1920-1980

A Book Review by John Talbird. Instead of throwing a heaping helping of film titles at us, substituting lists and anecdote for real analysis, each chapter takes a deep dive into one specific movie, contextualizing the film with the real-world effects of white flight, government abandonment of urban locales, urban […]

Larry Cohen in Conversation with Tony Williams: on Bone (From 2019)

To celebrate the life of Larry Cohen (1936-2019), Film International will excerpt portions of Tony Williams’s interviews with the filmmaker from Larry Cohen: Radical Allegories of an Independent Filmmaker, rev ed. (© 2015 Tony Williams by permission of McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640. www.mcfarlandbooks.com). Larry Cohen (LC): With a little bit […]

Control and Improvisation: An Interview with Mohammad Shirvani

By Ali Moosavi. I design the concepts and then within those concepts I leave the actors free…. As Béla Tarr has said, with interesting people and interesting locations you can make a good movie. I like to frame interesting people.” —Mohammad Shirvani At the 2008 Abu Dhabi Film Festival I watched […]

Be Like Water: Writer-Director the RZA on One Spoon of Chocolate

By Jonathan Monovich. Some paths are rocky, some paths are uphill, and some are downhill. Unique’s path is hopefully what makes this film special.” – The RZA To the RZA, the Abbot of the Wu-Tang Clan, “hip-hop is moviemaking.”1 This should come as no surprise. The iconic first Wu-Tang Clan album, […]

Horror Film Ascendant

By Gary D. Rhodes. 2026 is the watershed year of the bloodshed film. The sleep of reason has produced monsters, worlds of gods and monsters, new and old, now lauded by all except the most unreasonable amongst us.” To face evil and survive, or, for that matter, to face evil […]

Esther C.M. Yau and Tony Williams on Hong Kong Neo-Noir (from 2017)

The FilmInt community is saddened to learn of the passing of former contributing editor Tony Williams (at age 80), a groundbreaking film historian and critic. In addition to his work on the horror film and other genres, Tony had varied interests, as seen in this interview (conducted by editor Matthew […]