There are many things you need to check before making a movie; cast availability, contracts, and filming permits. “The consent of a Leftist commune” is not usually one of them, but then there aren’t many filming environments quite like post-war Germany. Rudolf Thome’s Red Sun, newly released on Blu-Ray by […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
The Hot Spot (1990): more fun than eating cotton candy barefoot (Blu-Ray Review)
Twilight (1990): an irresistible challenge that upends the detective genre (Review)
There are many mysteries to unpick in the new Second Run release, but the one that had me the most perplexed is this: what were people watching before this restoration? Because, as Stanley Schtinter’s booklet and several of the interviews on this disc attest, György Fehér’s debut theatrical release was […]
The Lighthouse (2019): a 4K illumination for a modern cult classic (Review)
Aptly for a director so invested in orally told tales – superstitions, fisherman’s stories, Icelandic sagas – Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse is already accruing its own legend. It’s one of the few modern films to have a legendarily tough shoot, all of which is unpacked in the three-part making-of documentary […]
Hopping Mad: The Mr Vampire Sequels (1986-1989) (Blu-Ray review)
Anyone with eyes to see, ears to hear or fangs to bite knows that Ricky Lau’s 1985 film Mr. Vampire is one of the most joyous comedies in cinema history, a perfect mix of spooky hijinks, balletic martial arts action and broad, goofy slapstick. It was inevitable that sequels would […]
Naked Lunch (1991): a special edition big enough to feed anyone’s addiction (Review)
One of the great things about Arrow Video’s Blu-Ray special edition of David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch is that the package does the same thing as the film: it uses cutting-edge technology to immerse you in the stranger corners of a now-lost era. In Cronenberg’s case, that meant using Chris Walas’s […]
The Pawnshop (Kinoteka 2023 Review)
The great documentarian Molly Dineen once said her preferred subject was “anything British that’s dying”. Łukasz Kowalski’s debut film The Pawnshop, presented as part of the 2023 Kinoteka festival of Polish cinema, shows that this formula works for anything Polish as well. It’s set almost entirely within the four walls […]
The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future (2022)(Review)
No, you’re quite right, we need to address that title first. What kind of film do you think The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future might be? Some fusion of Disney singalong and science fiction, maybe, a cross between Home on the Range and Ulysses 31. Sadly, Francesca […]
My Drywall Cocoon (SXSW 2023)(Review)
The only Brazilian feature in competition at this year’s SXSW, My Drywall Cocoon has a director who may not be familiar to English-language audiences, albeit largely due to the timidity of our distributors. Caroline Fioratti’s debut feature Meus 15 Anos was a huge crowd-pleaser in Brazil, but crowd-pleasers tend not […]
Smoking Causes Coughing (Glasgow Frightfest 2023)(Review)
Anyone who found this winter’s cycle of Oscar-bait movies about the magic of cinema rather too middlebrow may find respite in Quentin Dupieux’s Smoking Causes Coughing, the opening film at this year’s Glasgow FrightFest. Rather than the sanctified work of John Ford or Gene Kelly, Smoking Causes Coughing is inspired […]