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At Eternity's Gate

Year of Release:  2018 Director:  Julian Schnabel Screenplay:  Jean-Claude Carrière, Laura Kugelberg, Julian Schnabel Starring:  Willem Dafoe, Rupert Friend, Mads Mikkelsen, Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Oscar Isaac Running Time:  110 minutes Genre:  Biography, historical, drama France, 1888:  Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (Dafoe) moves from Paris to Arles, a city in the South of France.  Van Gogh finds himself inspired by the nature around him and embarks ona  period of feverish creativity.  However his behaviour alienates the townspeople and his work is ignored by the wider artistic community, as his mental health increasingly deteriorates.  However he is supported by his devoted brother Theo (Friend) and his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin (Isaac). The film details the final period of Vincent van Gogh, and dramatises the controversial theory that his death was not the result of suicide.  The film uses a range of cinematic techniques to portray the tormented mi
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Midsommar

Year of Release:  2019 Director:  Ari Aster Screenplay:  Ari Aster Starring:  Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, Will Poulter Running Time:  147 minutes (theatrical cut); 171 minutes (director's cut) Genre:  Horror This is one of the best and most beautiful horror films of recent times.  American student Dani (Pugh) is traumatised when her sister kills herself and their parents.  Dani's relationship with her boyfriend, Christian (Reynor) is already strained, and he in fact wants to break up with her, but can't in all conscience do so while she is going through so much pain, and so he reluctantly invites her on a trip with his friends to a remote commune in the Swedish countryside to attend a midsummer festival, which occurs only once every 90 years.  However the charming festivities soon take on a darker hue. This is a film where beauty and horror sit side by side.  Rolling green fields and meadows,
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Torture Garden

Year of Release:  1967 Director:  Freddie Francis Screenplay:  Robert Bloch Starring;  Jack Palance, Burgess Meredith, Beverley Adams, Peter Cushing, Michael Bryant, Barbara Ewing Running Time: 90 minutes Genre:  Horror At a circus sideshow run by the mysterious Dr. Diabolo (Meredith), a group of people are invited to view their bizarre futures which involve a murderer running afoul of a diabolical man-eating cat; an ambitious movie actress learning that her costars are androids; a journalist incurring the wrath of a malevolent piano, and a collector running afoul of the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe. Back in the 1960s and 70s, in the world of British horror cinema, the main rival to Hammer Films was Amicus which specialised in portmanteau films where a series of self contained short stories were linked by a framing narrative, and Torture Garden  is decent example of this.  Scripted by Robert Bloch, best known as the author of Psycho , and directed by cinematographer turned directo
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