Ziv Garcia

Fantasia describes Strange Circus as, “challenging”, “bizarre” and “adventurous” - all words you politely use when a film doesn’t quite work.

Neighborhood Watch is an expertly constructed animal. The film lulls you into a false sense of complacency by introducing black comic flourishes while simultaneously laying a tightwire foundation.

I had already written a capsule review giving a list of reasons why I didn’t like this film until it occurred to me what the real problem was. This is a film that was created for kids and I’m no longer 10 years old. I’m also a fan of Miike’s work in general and simply wasn’t expecting this kind of tame F/X driven fairytale.

Evil Aliens is actually quite informational. For instance, I wasn’t aware that to aliens, the human colon is the galactic equivalent of a pencil sharpener. I was also surprised to learn that testing a new showerhead is a lot like having sex with hot E.T.’s. In spite of a few creative flourishes, Evil Aliens seems mostly content to take every cliché of alien visitation and render it in comically gory detail.

Chock full of symbolism, Lunacy alternates between literal interludes of stop-motion slabs of meat that seem to be indulging in their own dementia and character monologues that question the moral foundation of society.