The fictional detective is a rational creature. As soon as detective stories were invented, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle were using their sleuths to reveal the mundane truth behind apparently supernatural events; the latter’s maxim that when you have eliminated the impossible, what remains – however improbable – […]
Silent film
Classic Film Kid: Modern Times (1936)(Review)
Hello everyone, welcome to another review from the Classic Film Kid! Today we are travelling back to the 1930s and covering Modern Times – one of the most iconic films written by, directed and starring the legendary Charlie Chaplin. This silent film explores his iconic Little Tramp character navigating his […]
Early Universal Vol 2: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea/The Calgary Stampede/What Happened to Jones? (1916-1926) (Review)
Hot on the heels of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema release of Early Universal Vol 1 in August comes this second volume from the vaults of the 110-year-old Hollywood studio, featuring one of its earliest productions, an epic adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea from 1916, alongside 1925 […]
Straight Shooting (1917) and Hell Bent (1918): John Ford quietly establishes the Western’s essentials (review)
The history of silent cinema is famously patchy, and it’s not surprising when you look at how these films were churned out. Straight Shooting, the first film in Eureka Masters of Cinema’s double-bill of silent-era John Ford films, is the earliest surviving film from the future director of The Searchers. […]
Shiraz: A Romance of India (1928) Indian Silent Film whose strengths lie in its romantic story (Review)
The Colour of Pomegranates (1969) impenetrably profound and dazzlingly superficial (Review)
Maybe you find that challenging, or intimidating, or mind-numbing, or somewhere between all three. If so, I’m not exactly sweetening the pot if I tell you that the film is a series of oblique, poetic tableaux vivants that symbolically illustrate the inner and outer life of the 18th century Armenian […]
The General (1926) The Greatest Failure in American Cinema History (Review)
Sherlock Jr (1924) A silent comedy far ahead of its time (Review)
The Informer (1929) 90-year-old silent political thriller feels timeless (Review)
There are features on the disc and in the booklet accompanying the BFI’s new dual-format release of Arthur Robison’s 1929 thriller The Informer describing how long and careful the restoration process was. Just as well; anyone under the delusion that a silent film could be restored in a couple of weeks […]
Charlie Chaplin: The Essanay Comedies (1915-1916) (Review)
Commenting on the ease of writing a review never needs to be brought up because it isn’t relevant. However, any notion of hardship from writing such an article typically comes from a need to evade spoilers. BFI’s Chaplin Essanay’s comedy set is different purely because of how uniform and similar […]