In a 1995 interview packaged as part of Arrow Academy’s new restoration of The Apartment, Billy Wilder remembers a scene from David Lean’s Brief Encounter, a ‘black and white, very simple’ movie that he considers one of that director’s greatest. He and I have very different memories of it. In […]
George Hardy
London Film Festival 2017, Part 4: Hanging Up
Maybe I wasn’t adventurous enough. But the way the LFF advertises its slate of films, it’s too tempting not to be. See, there’s an ‘official competition’, but unlike major film festivals like Cannes or Venice, the most hotly anticipated offerings aren’t in it, for the most part— London likes its […]
London Film Festival 2017: Part Three – the big apple in the big smog
Listen. I have come unstuck in Good Time. It’s the start of the festival, and there are too many press screenings to count, all going on at the same time. So I have to make hard choices. Inadvertently, I chose 4 films about New York in a row. This would […]
London Film Festival 2017: Part Two, and the big day approaches
Lean on Pete is Andrew Haigh’s latest, and also the name of an ageing racehorse; Charley the name of the boy who befriends him while working a summer job for a run-down man named Del (Steve Buscemi) who owns run-down horses piloted by run-down jockeys— they didn’t start that way, […]
Blood Simple (1984) Remarkable for punching above its weight in every conceivable way (Review)
‘It’s the same old song/ but with a different meaning since you been gone’— Blood Simple is back in cinemas ahead of a blu-ray release by Studiocanal, and there’s no review more pithy than the Four Tops song given pride of place on the film’s soundtrack. I wasn’t even alive […]
London Film Festival, Part 1: Pre-Gaming
Last Sunday night, on a whim, I took the bus into central London to watch David Lynch’s The Straight Story projected on 35mm film at my favourite independent cinema, the Prince Charles just off Leicester Square. It was almost 9pm, but the square was as crowded as ever. There’s more […]
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) So overambitious it’s amazing it doesn’t fall apart (Review)
Where, But In America? asked an early working title for Stanley Kramer’s extravagant Ultra Panavision progenitor of the ‘epic comedy’ genre. Scotland is the sensible answer, the planned location of a wacky race that the transatlantic writing duo of William and Tania Rose, famous for Ealing comedies such as The […]
The Love of a Woman (1953) a modest, forgotten gem of French Cinema (Review)
‘En dix ans, douze millions de beaux bébés pour la France.’ With those words, Charles de Gaulle ushered in a new era of French ‘politique nataliste’ in 1945, a system of government incentives and social and religious pressures intended to address the country’s low birth rate. Women workers were seen […]