by Sebastian Kluth
Ladies and gentlemen, On the thirteenth day of my trip across Eastern Canada, I arrived in Argentia, Newfoundland and Labrador and drove all the way to the province's capital Saint John's. I immediately fell in love with the savage, isolated and colourful...
Samsara Flight ~輪廻飛翔~ was released in two different versions. The first one was a package of three discs, including reworked classics, a selection of simply compiled greatest hits plus a live show honoring the legendary Thunder in the East album which...
Brotherhood of Blades is a very entertaining wu xia movie. It combines dynamic martial arts and sword fights with historical costumes and settings and a dramatic dose of suspense in form of complex conspiracies. The greatest thing about the movie is that...
Three years after the pitiless Cavalo de Tróia, Brazilian crossover thrash metal quartet Ação Libertária is back with another thought-provoking full length effort consisting of twelve tracks and a running time of thirty-five minutes entitled Cidadão de...
Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival is the twenty-first entry in the Japanese franchise about the blind masseur, skilled swordsman and lowly yakuza. This is also by far the most experimental movie in the series so far and comes as an unexpected positive...
Samaritan Zatoichi is the nineteenth film in the franchise about the blind masseur, skilled swordsman and lowly yakuza. In this movie, Zatoichi reprises his work as yakuza to earn some money. Initially hired as observator, he ends up fighting and killing...
I have been a fan of the Tomb Raider franchise for more than twenty years which means more than two thirds of my lifetime. I have played all the video games and watched the previous movies with Angelina Jolie. The first one was a little bit shallow while...
When the infamous Iraq War started one and a half decades ago, I was still in high school but I remember many students of my age demonstrating against said war and the American President George W. Bush. I recall a classmate of mine who brought a poster...
Omnium Gatherum is a quite complicated case. The Finnish melodic death metal band is absolutely captivating in concert but rarely transmits this certain type of magic onto its regular studio albums. This is particularly obvious on Grey Heavens. The band...
After releasing one of the very best entries in the franchise with the sinister Zatoichi's Revenge, Zatoichi and the Doomed Man is one of the weakest films about the blind masseur. It tells how Zatoichi gets arrested for illegal gambling and meets a prisoner...
I have often come across the name Visions of Atlantis but never bothered to check out a record so far. If I had to describe the band's style briefly, I would say it's the type of female-fronted power metal with symphonic elements that was all the rage...
Cypecore is band that mixes groove metal, industrial metal and melodic death metal. The vocals are mostly performed in a harsh melodic death metal style with a few isolated shouts and clean vocal passages. Distorted vocal effects also shine through here...
When you purchase an Anvil record, you know exactly what to expect: tight old school heavy metal with occasional hard rock and doom metal influences shining through. This is also the case for the band's seventeenth album in forty years. What makes this...
Going into this movie, I didn't expect anything. I went to a movie night at my local cinema on a Tuesday night and simply needed to find a second film to complete my double feature. It turns out that I got much more than I would have expected from this...
*** This review may contain spoilers *** The Villainess could have been one of this year's greatest movies. The first-person action choreography is absolutely stunning, the characters are interesting to profound and the story is filled with numerous twists...
A Cure of Wellness is one of the best Western movies in recent memory and it's a mystery to me why this film didn't get the attention it deserved. Many people claim that it bombed at the box office. That's not surprising because I was actively trying...
There Is No Place for Fear might be the strongest release thus far by Russian heavy metal quartet Phaeton. If compared to the debut EP which was already slightly above average, many things have improved on the first full length effort. The production...
I have rarely listened to an album whose title is as appropriate as Masterpiece of Bitterness. It really describes the sound Solstafir explores here as this album showcases courageous and epic song writing with a depressing and gloomy atmosphere. If compared...
*** This review may contain spoilers *** Let's get one thing straight. This movie isn't historically accurate. It is much more a movie about the relationship between a grandmaster and his respected opponent's daughter than a biography of Ip Man. That...
IT offers an excellent mixture of a coming-of-age drama and a supernatural horror movie. What I like about this film adaptation is how the film respects both sides on a perfectly balanced level. We are introduced to the lives of outcast teenage boys and...
Angels of Mercy: Live in Germany is Primal Fear's first live record in seven years which is available as a set consisting of a CD and a DVD or alternatively as a set consisting of a CD and a Blu-ray. Despite a promising set list and an overall solid performance,...
La Isla Minima, also known as Marshland, is a Spanish thriller that has won ten Goya Awards, the Spanish equivalent of the Academy Awards. For once, this film truly deserves the praise it got. The story revolves around the mysterious disappearance of...
Eight years ago, the French-Canadian action-comedy movie Father and Guns was a massive blockbuster. While a similar movie like Good Cop, Bad Cop managed to reinvent itself for a stunning sequel, the makers of Father and Guns decided to stick to the exact...
Amorphis hasn't released a physical greatest hits compilation in more than thirteen years when ''Chapters'' had been published. Since then, Amorphis had an important line-up change with the chasrismatic and versatile Tomi Joutsen taking Pasi Koskinen's...
I'm glad I didn't buy into the numerous negative reviews and purchased this film that seemed to have a very intriguing plot. I must say that I even got much more than I expected. 400 Days convinces with a gloomy and mysterious atmosphere, four distinguished...
