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
London Film Festival 2017: Part Two, and the big day approaches
Blood Simple (1984) Remarkable for punching above its weight in every conceivable way (Review)
London Film Festival, Part 1: Pre-Gaming
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 […]