Released to Criterion this week is a film that caused shock and outrage in its native Italy upon its release in 1965. Marco Bellocchio’s feature debut Fists in the Pocket is a disquieting, macabre and unique work that seemed designed to ruffle a few feathers, not only in its desire […]
Mark Cunliffe
Wanda (1970) A Glimpse of the Real New Hollywood? (Review)
April 17th sees the release to the Criterion Collection of Wanda, the first and only feature film from Barbara Loden, actor and wife of Elia Kazan. A landmark in US cinema’s independent movement, Wanda is set in the unglamorous sooty surroundings of eastern Pennsylvania’s industrial heartlands and features a central […]
Married to the Mob (1988) Jonathan Demme’s Wise Guy Screwball Farce (Review)
Radiance Films continues an impressive run in its debut year with a new 2K restoration release of Jonathan Demme’s hit 1988 farce Married to the Mob, the movie that launched Michelle Pfeiffer’s star into its bright ascendency. Pfeiffer stars as Angela de Marco, a young Long Island housewife whose unfaithful […]
This World Is Not My Own (SXSW 2023) (Review)
Letter to the Postman (2022) & Questions to the Filmmaker
In the final days of 2022, I happened upon an intriguing sixty-minute low-budget film. Entitled Letters to the Postman, it is an adaptation by British indie filmmaker Felix Dembinski of a short story by Robert Aickman which appeared in the author’s 1980 anthology Intrusions and proved to be his final […]
Linie 1 (1988): All Aboard for a German New Wave Musical (Review)
Your attention, please. The Blu-ray now arriving on this platform is the Studio Canal Cult Classics release of Linie 1, Reinhard Hauff’s 1988 big-screen adaptation of Germany’s second-most successful musical after Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. Linie 1 tells the story of Sunnie (Inka Victoria Goetschel), a young woman who, having learnt […]
The Cassandra Cat (aka Až přijde kocour) (1963); I See Your True Colours Shining Through (Review)
A Woman Kills (1968) Rediscovered Psychodrama Proves Problematic Today (Review)
Paris, the summer of 1968. A tumultuous time in French history, with situationists, students and striking workers bringing the capital to a standstill and threatening to change the country, and possibly the world, forever more. Revolution was in the air and its effects inevitably impacted art at the time. Cinematically, […]
The Munsters (2022) The Gags are Creakier than Slowly Opening Coffin Lids (Film Review)
Run Man Run (1968): A Picaresque Shaggy Dog Tale of a Tortilla Western (Review)
Receiving its Blu-ray world premiere from Eureka Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema series this week is the third and final Western from director Sergio Sollima, 1968’s Run, Man, Run. Set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, this ‘Zapata’ or ‘Tortilla’ Western (the names commonly given to these Italian-made oaters of […]