Following on from February’s Lies and Deceit, Arrow have returned to the films of Claude Chabrol for their new box set Twisting the Knife. Twisting the Knife has a slightly different remit to Lies and Deceit; the former box set selected various films Chabrol directed between 1985 and 1994 but […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
The Big Racket (1976) & Heroin Busters (1977): two films by Enzo G Castellari (Review)
Enzo G Castellari is now best-known not for a film he directed but for a film he inspired: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which lifts its title from his 1978 war film The Inglorious Bastards. A more direct impact he had on movie history would be Keoma, the 1976 film he […]
In the Family (2011) and The Grief of Others (2015): two films by Patrick Wang (Review)
It’s rare, to say the least, for a director to go from having no films released in the UK to having his entire back catalogue made available overnight. But this is what’s happened to Patrick Wang, whose four features to date were released by Bulldog Film Distribution at selected cinemas […]
To Sleep So As To Dream (1986): silent Japanese dream detectives! (Review)
The fictional detective is a rational creature. As soon as detective stories were invented, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle were using their sleuths to reveal the mundane truth behind apparently supernatural events; the latter’s maxim that when you have eliminated the impossible, what remains – however improbable – […]
Boat People (1982): Ann Hui’s controversial snapshot of post-war Vietnam (Review)
There’s an extra on Criterion UK’s Blu-Ray of Ann Hui’s 1982 film Boat People that’s so good, I’d like to beg your indulgence to deal with it before we get to the main feature. Keep Rolling is a two-hour documentary about Hui’s life and career by Man Lim-Chung. Made in […]
Europa (2022): gripping outsider’s view of Fortress Europe (Review)
A tough, stripped-back refugee story, it’s tempting to say that Europa (released in cinemas and on-demand by Bulldog Distribution) is a timely release. Except that would imply it wouldn’t have been timely if it was released, say, three months ago. The Ukrainian crisis is the one that’s currently in the […]
Bartleby (1970): literature’s greatest enigma gets a fine, clever modernisation (Review)
Herman Melville is most famous for writing one of the American novel’s greatest epics in Moby-Dick, but his second most fascinating work couldn’t be more different in terms of scale. A modest, compact short story about a Wall Street clerk who sends his office into turmoil by politely refusing all […]
Lies and Deceit: Madame Bovary (1991), Betty (1992), Torment (1994) (Review)
After the Inspector Lavardin films, the second half of Arrow’s box set Lies and Deceit: Five Films by Claude Chabrol takes the duplicity promised in the title from the criminal to the domestic sphere. These three films also show Chabrol working with one of the key themes of the French […]
A Bread Factory Parts One and Two (2018) Epic art-world comedy (Review)
You wait ages for a two-part independent film about making art, and then – aptly enough – two come at once. Following on from Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Parts I and II, Bulldog distribution are releasing Patrick Wang’s A Bread Factory Parts One and Two. These films were originally released […]
Seance (2021): standard slasher with one killer extra (Review)
It won’t be my favourite film of the year, but Acorn media’s Blu-Ray release of Simon Barrett’s directorial debut Seance contains an early contender for extra of the year. Barrett begins the director’s commentary with disarming enthusiasm, saying he’s always loved director’s commentaries and is excited to be providing his […]