Let’s get the big thing out of the way first – and I mean big. The new Second Run Blu-Ray, CzechMate – In Search of Jíři Menzel, is a 448-minute documentary about Czech and Slovak cinema. It’s been cited as the longest Indian film ever made, and that’s a country […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
Scorsese Shorts (1963-74) supremely confident first steps of a master (Review)
Thanks to sites like Vimeo and YouTube, it’s now easier to see short films than it has been since the days of the supporting feature. In between, the only shorts that were widely distributed were ones by notable directors, as was the case with Scorsese x 4, a VHS compilation […]
John Ford at Columbia 1935-1958: Way outside the West (Review)
“My name’s John Ford. I make Westerns. I don’t think there’s anyone in this room who knows more about what the American public wants than Cecil B. DeMille – and he certainly knows how to give it to them. But I don’t like you, C.B. I don’t like what you […]
Curling: grips in ways a standard Hollywood thriller can’t manage (Review)
So do Second Run have some kind of insider knowledge, or…? Their first all-new release of 2020 (after a welcome Blu-Ray upgrade for Valerie and Her Week of Wonders) is Denis Côté’s Curling, a spare, paranoid film about self-isolation, home-schooling and precarious minimum-wage jobs. A rare chance for British audiences […]
The Navigator: still hugely impressive today (Review)
Eureka’s first box set of Blu-Ray Buster Keaton reissues, released in 2017, featured Steamboat Bill Jr., Sherlock Jr. and The General, the latter being the film that, more than any other, his contemporary auteur reputation rests on. The General was a critical and commercial flop on release; The Navigator, which […]
Antonio Gaudí (1984): pure cinema explores pure imagination (review)
Hiroshi Teshigahara, the first Asian filmmaker to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar, is today best remembered for his quartet of collaborations with the novelist Kōbō Abe: Pitfall, The Face of Another, The Ruined Map and Woman in the Dunes, the latter of which got the Academy’s attention. Criterion […]
The Essential Jacques Demy: a constant conveyor belt of delights (Review)
In the wake of the Oscars’ unprecedented decision to award Best Picture to the best film in competition, let’s revisit the film which turned a previous generation on to subtitled cinema: Jacques Demy’s 1964 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It can’t be overstated what a hit it was on release, winning […]
The Winslow Boy: remarkably empathetic and genuine (Review)
“Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you?” asks Tony Hancock in Hancock’s Half Hour. “Did she die in vain?” Those in need of a refresher as to what the thirteenth-century bill of rights – the closest thing Britain has to a Constitution – actually means are encouraged to watch The […]
The Halfway House: beguiling Ealing, with hints of later ghost stories (Review)
Who’s up for a ghost story at Christmas? Plenty of people, judging by the British television schedules, with adaptations of MR James and Susan Hill jostling for position alongside Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight’s revisionist A Christmas Carol. The dark, chilly, rainy nights lend themselves perfectly to a fireside tale, […]
Moonrise Kingdom: Revel in the artificiality! (Review)
Wes Anderson’s films always have a sense of existing outside of time, in an indefinably old-fashioned present. It makes a perverse sort of sense, then, that when he finally made one set in the 1960s it stood out for not having the Kinks and the Rolling Stones on the soundtrack. […]