Yes, I am yoking three reviews and three films together, but bear with me, and we can ride on this makeshift oxcart together. It’s not just that two of them are from the BFI’s Woodfall collection, a recent boxed set of British New Wave classics; or that all three are […]
George Hardy
A Ciambra (2017) Neo-Italian Social Neo-Realism fails to recapture the magic of the masters (Review)
A spectre is haunting cinema— the spectre of Italian neorealism. Spectral, because despite the critical and cultural ripples made by films like The Florida Project, American Honey, and Valeska Grisebach’s Western, these non-professional actors, semi-real situations and hitherto unexplored settings tend to be forgotten by awards season. The genre, which […]
The Defiant Ones (1958) one of the most crushing, pessimistic examples of the Hays Code in action (Review)
This summer, you might have already seen two very different people, chained together, forced to co-operate in order to escape their captivity. They even climbed out of a mud-pit; if you weren’t thinking about The Defiant Ones (about two chain-gang prisoners, one white and one black, in a similar mess) […]
Inherit the Wind (1960) “something to believe in – which is not always the same as the truth” (Review)
In the mid 1950s, at the height of Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist campaign of political repression, a bold new courtroom drama opened on Broadway that allegorised a dire incident from America’s Christian fundamentalist history to excoriate the current climate of fear and repression. The play’s impact on the culture of America […]
St Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) Roger Corman extends himself beyond horror and exploitation with interesting results (Review)
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972)(Review)
The Awful Truth (1937) Screwball comedy, Oscars and the Politics of Laughter (Review)
An Actor’s Revenge (1963) Pays thoughtful homage to Japanese theatre’s Kabuki history (Review)
It’s late Edo-period Japan. An acting troupe from Osaka has arrived in the capital city to perform. Thieves and pickpockets stalk their prey among the paying audience, while merchants and aristocrats watch from the balcony seats. Yukinojo, a slightly paunchy onnagata (kabuki actor who plays female roles), sits centre stage, […]
Ice Cold in Alex (1958) Unassuming World War II drama that birthed the modern beer commercial (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 […]