As a revving engine opens Fill er up with Super, co-writer/director Alain Cavalier highlights the vehicular linchpin to the unfolding story. Car salesman Klouk (Bernard Crombey) is initially seen dealing with a prospective seller, combating every query which attempts to lower the asking price for a desired car. After a […]
France
Vivre Sa vie (1962): Godard, the ultimate cinephile, makes his most emotional film (Blu-Ray Review)
Which film director best exemplifies cinephilia? For many people today, the answer would be Quentin Tarantino, who’s just published a book giving his personal take on film history, Cinema Speculation. For Godard – who was less than flattered by Tarantino naming his production company after Godard’s 1964 film Bande a […]
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 Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) The Original Universal Monster makes his UK debut (Blu-Ray Review)
It’s a strange, spellbinding experience to witness Lon Chaney’s titular disfigured bell-ringer appear on-screen for the first time, knowing in hindsight that this film, in many ways, was the beginning of blockbuster cinema as we know it today. The first adaptation of many of Victor Hugo’s classic novel, Wallace Worsley’s […]
Frightfest 2022: Incredible but true (Festival Review)
Quentin Dupieux is a fascinating multihyphenate. For my generation, he emerged with the puppet Flat Eric and his dance single, flat beat. Since then, he emerged as a filmmaker and his first notable cut-through came in 2010’s Rubber A.K.A. The killer tyre movie, and in the decade since he’s continued […]
Frightfest 2022: Orchestrator of Storms (Festival Review)
Her Way (2022) Sentimental and melancholic but truthful (Cinema & VOD Review)
Edge of Sanity (1989) Jekyll, Hyde & Jack the Ripper in thinly-spread Erotic Horror (Review)
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is one of the more regularly adapted and reimagined texts in science fiction literature, up there with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Whilst based on historical fact, conspiracy and theory, Jack the Ripper has enjoyed just as many takes throughout […]
Théo and the Metamorphosis (2021): uncomfortable for the right reasons (Cinema Review)
Enter the Void (2009): a city symphony in 21st-century neon (Review)
Gaspar Noé’s new film Vortex, currently on release in UK cinemas, is shocking audiences in perhaps the only way Noé can shock people at this juncture: by removing his usual graphic violence and unsimulated sex in favour of a sensitive exploration of dementia and death. There is another film called […]