Nobody comes to An Unearthly Child cold these days. The only reason anyone knows about it is bound up with what happened next: it launched a series, a series which, barring accidents, ran for the next sixty-one years and counting. Yet one of the pleasures of the opening episode is […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
Video Vision (FrightFest 2024) Review
When a film starts off with the credit “Less Tech More Life presents…” you can probably guess where it’s going to land on certain issues. Video Vision comes from writer-director Michael Turley, whose lesstechmorelife.com website hosts a manifesto on the need to “wake ourselves up from the digital spell we […]
Dancing Village: The Curse Begins (2024): Nimbly avoids the curse of Prequels (Review)
When’s the best time to watch a prequel? You’d think it’d be natural to get them in first, and plenty of people do just that. I have several friends who’ve introduced their kids to Star Wars in chronological order, from the crushing disappointment of The Phantom Menace, to the crushing […]
Santa Sangre (1989): Carnage at the Circus in Jodorowsky’s Chaotic Classic (Review)
What can you say about Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre, or more specifically, what can you say about it that isn’t said somewhere on this enormous four-disc Blu-Ray from Severin Films? The scale of this release is extraordinary, and includes the film itself in 4K and standard forms, a commentary with […]
Poolman (2023): it’s not Chris Pine’s The Big Lebowski, but it’s not bad either (Review)
The first thing we hear is the distant barking of dogs, and the wolves have certainly been out for Chris Pine’s directorial debut since it premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Before the event began, the idea of Best Chris giving his variant on the Dude archetype in […]
The G (2023): lean, realist revenge thriller puts a welcome spotlight on Dale Dickey (Review)
The concept of “geriaction” has been around for a fair while, although not long enough for people to give it a better name. Younger audiences born around the time Liam Neeson made his first Taken movie in 2008 might be forgiven for assuming older leads are just a thing action […]
The Crazy Family (1984) Energetic Bad-Taste Comedy Breaks down the Traditional Japanese Family Drama (Review)
The first thing you wonder when you sit down to watch a film called The Crazy Family – now released on Blu-Ray by Third Window – is how crazy are they going to be, exactly? “Crazy”, as a descriptor, can be pretty relatable: we were definitely meant to feel for Beyonce when […]
Trenque Lauquen (2022) There’s Something Big Happening in Argentina (Review)
There’s something big happening in Argentina – operative word big. El Pampero Cine is a collective who have made an international name for themselves making movies that are experimental, local and personal, yet which shun the modest scale of most films which can be so described. Their most ambitious production […]
Hamlet (2024): Age cannot wither McKellen’s Great Dane (Review)
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 […]
Three films by Jerzy Skolimowski: Walkover, Barrier and Dialogue 20-40-60 (1965-68) (Blu-Ray Review)
Jerzy Skolimowski’s film Barrier, the second in this Blu-Ray set of three early features from Second Run, begins with a manifesto. A youthful man is complaining that the young are always expected to make sacrifices while the old simply accumulate wealth, and questions why it can’t be him in the […]