Scotland Loves Anime 32
Gundam Thunderbolt
By Andrew Osmond. Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky may be the closest that anime has ever come to producing a full-blown Vietnam film. The Gundam franchise has always been about war, but Thunderbolt suggests its makers were marathoning films like Apocalypse Now and Born on the Fourth of July. Thunderbolt makes a “gritty” Hollywood franchise film […]
Calamity of a Zombie Girl
By Andrew Osmond. Calamity of a Zombie Girl is a horror film. If we’re being more precise, it’s a schlocky horror picture show, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise. It’s a film in which college-age students investigate an occult mystery, uncover something they shouldn’t, and then start dying messily. There will be blood. Heads will be […]
Interview: Mamoru Hosoda
By Andrew Osmond. In the run-up to the cinema release of Mamoru Hosoda’s eagerly awaited Mirai on 2nd November (subtitled) and 4th November 4 (dubbed), I interviewed Hosoda himself about his new film. Mirai revolves around the adventures of Kun, a four year-old boy in Japan, who magically encounters family members from the past and […]
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
By Andrew Osmond. One of the virtues of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is that it’s a franchise film that doesn’t ask you to know anything about the franchise. You can enjoy the film as a one-off weird tale, a spaghetti Hammer which transposes vampires and their hunter nemeses into a fantasy Wild West, millennia into […]
Mind Game
By Andrew Osmond. Mind Game is a trip. Struggling to describe it in my book 100 Animated Feature Films, I called it “spectacular, spontaneous, confusing, kooky and hilarious.” It’s also dense, packed with so many dizzying visual ideas screaming for a rewatch. Its visual style is freehand, lopsided, a virtuoso exercise of virtuous sloppiness. Its […]