To quote that great authority on Shakespearian acting, Withnail’s Uncle Monty, “it is the most devastating moment in a young man’s life when he quite reasonably says to himself ‘I shall never play the Dane!’” Shakespeare might have ascribed seven ages to man in As You Like It, but as […]
Graham Williamson
Three films by Jerzy Skolimowski: Walkover, Barrier and Dialogue 20-40-60 (1965-68) (Blu-Ray Review)
Happy End (1967): the kind of film that could spark a lifelong obsession with Czech comedy (Review)
Danger Zone (Kinoteka 2024) (Review)
One Percenter (2023): Japanese Fall Guy delivers eighty-five minutes of mayhem (Review)
For some people, films about film-making are insufferable exercises in navel-gazing, nothing more than a way for self-absorbed artistes to force us to experience their creative angst. Yet there is a long history of this kind of meta-film within that least pretentious of genres, action. There’s a pretty simple reason […]
A Wolfpack Called Ernesto (2023): Experimental look at Mexican Gang Culture (Review)
As one of the subjects of Everardo Gonzáles’s new film A Wolfpack Called Ernesto puts it, “you get involved by looking”. Where theatre has monologues and novels have first-person narration, film has the close-up as its signature method of encouraging you to identify with a character’s emotions. You could chart […]
Experimental Shorts (Slamdance Film Festival 2024) (Review)
Even in a festival as dedicated to the unexpected as Slamdance, there’s only one strand where you can see a film whose descriptive subtitles specify the sound of “[downpour of fish]”. It’s the experimental shorts strand, a useful opportunity to press your ear to the film-making underground. The fishy rain […]
Demon Mineral (Slamdance Film Festival 2024)(Review)
Now just a year away from its thirtieth birthday, Slamdance remains focused on low-budget films from emerging directors. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s alienated from the mainstream, though. The 2024 festival has specialist strands dealing with two areas that have been unexpectedly prominent in mainstream media of late. One of […]
The Civil Dead (2022) A Mumblecore Shaggy Dog Story with None of the Downsides (Review)
Murder Obsession (1981): Late-Period Meta-Giallo With Some Unforgettable Set-Pieces (Review)
In terms of titles that encapsulate the appeal of a whole genre, there aren’t many competitors, are there? You have the murder, you have the obsession, and every giallo must feature both, but only one of them is called Murder Obsession. Riccardo Freda’s final film, reissued on Blu-Ray by Radiance […]