Author | Critic
“Missing Child Videotape’s most significant virtues are in the intricacies of its folklore-steeped plot, which patiently unfolds with carefully administered moments of eerie revelation, especially surrounding the site of its central mystery.”
Pre-2024 releases only.
TOP 10 VIEWINGS (one per director)
Die Nibelungen, Part II: Kriemhild’s Revenge (Fritz Lang, 1924)
Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille, 1934)
Three Comrades (Frank Borzage, 1938)
Mogambo (John Ford, 1953)
Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)
The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (Richard Fleischer, 1955)
Peyton Place (Mark Robson, 1957)
The Big Country (William Wyler, 1958)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Terence Fisher, 1959)
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)
ADDITIONAL STANDOUT VIEWINGS
City Girl (F. W. Murnau, 1930)
Dodsworth (William Wyler, 1936)
The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
The House of the Seven Gables (Joe May, 1940)
Carnival of Sinners (Maurice Tourneur, 1943)
The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak, 1946)
The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949)
Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950)
The Tall Target (Anthony Mann, 1951)
Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952)
Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953)
The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1955)
The Quatermass XPeriment (Val Guest, 1955)
Summertime (David Lean, 1955)
Quatermass 2 (Val Guest, 1957)
The Last Hurrah (John Ford, 1958)
The Reluctant Debutante (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)
A Summer Place (Delmer Daves, 1959)
Tender is the Night (Henry King, 1962)
Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963)
Danza Macabra (Antonio Margheriti, 1964)
War-Gods of the Deep (Jacques Tourneur, 1965)
Island of Terror (Terence Fisher, 1966)
Quatermass and the Pit (Roy Ward Baker, 1967)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (Freddie Francis, 1968)
The Unfaithful Wife (Claude Chabrol, 1969)
The Age of the Medici (Roberto Rossellini, 1972)
The Stone Tape (Peter Sasdy, 1972)
Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1974)
The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974)
Burnt Offerings (Dan Curtis, 1976)
The Nixon Interviews with David Frost (Jørn Winther, 1977)
Losing Ground (Kathleen Collins, 1982)
The 4th Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983)
Angel Dust (Gakuryū Ishii, 1994)
Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1995)
Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997)
Serpent’s Path (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1998)
Ju-On: The Curse 2 (Takashi Shimizu, 2000)
Nightcap (Claude Chabrol, 2000)
Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)
Shallow Hal (Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly, 2001)
Ju-On: The Grudge 2 (Takashi Shimizu, 2003)
Swimming Pool (François Ozon, 2003)
The Bridesmaid (Claude Chabrol, 2004)
Speak (Jessica Sharzer, 2004)
The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2004/2018)
Reincarnation (Takashi Shimizu, 2005)
A Girl Cut in Two (Claude Chabrol, 2007)
Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008)
Missing (Tsui Hark, 2008)
Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat, 2009)
Occult (Koji Shiraishi, 2009)
Watchmen [director’s cut] (Zack Snyder, 2009)
Untold History of the United States (Oliver Stone, 2012)
A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski, 2016)
The Putin Interviews (Oliver Stone, 2017)
Sharp Objects (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2018)
The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2018)
I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter (Erin Lee Carr, 2019)
Hemingway (Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, 2021)
The Deep End (Jon Kasbe, 2022)
Eureka (Lisandro Alonso, 2023)
Immersion (Takashi Shimizu, 2023)
Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2023)
Tell Them You Love Me (Nick August-Perna, 2023)
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)
“Sayuri makes overtures to the cultural anxieties underlying many haunted house narratives, with several lines pointedly alluding to what constitutes a ‘happy life.’ An early scene depicts a teacher asking her disinterested class to analyze a poem by posing questions such as ‘Where do we find happiness?’ and ‘What exactly is happiness?’ The film ultimately disavows the notion that domestic ownership equals anything like existential fulfillment or familial harmony. It locates horror in the conformist embrace of cultural repetitions, depicting its haunting as something like a tape stuck in a loop: the same ghostly giggle echoes through the house again and again, haunted TVs replay snippets of glitchy footage, and one character repeatedly watches the simulated reenactment of her beloved’s grisly death.”
Mike Thorn 