The history of silent cinema is famously patchy, and it’s not surprising when you look at how these films were churned out. Straight Shooting, the first film in Eureka Masters of Cinema’s double-bill of silent-era John Ford films, is the earliest surviving film from the future director of The Searchers. […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
But I’m a Cheerleader! (1999): the best John Waters film Waters never made (Review)
It’s all very well if you’re a Jack or a Sarah, apparently, but us Grahams have few iconic movie characters who share our name. Even more reason, then, to cheer for Lionsgate’s new Blu-Ray of Jamie Babbit’s cult comedy But I’m a Cheerleader, which gives us a Graham for the […]
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932): a devil of a time with a future star (Review)
It was a truism, once, that Hollywood portrayals of alcoholism were glib, comic affairs until Billy Wilder made The Long Weekend. While nothing can take away the quality of Wilder’s film, one of the pleasures of living at this particular moment in history – yes, there are some – is […]
The Silence Before Bach (2007) and Mudanza (2008) (Review)
There’s a running bit in Steve Jobs, Danny Boyle’s most irritating film, where the title character repeatedly explains the importance of making phones that are slightly smaller and more functional than other phones by comparing them to major flashpoints in art history – Dylan going electric, say, or the premiere […]
Masculin Féminin (1966): further adventures of Jean-Luc Godard (Review)
Criterion have supplied a typically solid set of extras for their UK Blu-Ray release of Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin Féminin, including archive interviews with star Chantal Goya, appreciation by critic Freddy Buache and footage of Godard directing the film-within-a-film (of which, more later). If you want more, though, Emmanuel Laurent’s 2010 […]
A Glitch in the Matrix (2021): Room 237 director’s latest labyrinth (Review)
Everyone sees themselves as a hero in their own story. For some people, that’s a romantic lead, for others it’s a little guy against the system. Personally I see myself as a battered but unbowed white knight, who takes up his steed and his shield every time people start egregiously […]
I Start Counting (1969): or, when is a reissue really a box set? (Review)
The BFI’s Flipside label has a reputation for unearthing the seamier, seedier side of British cinema, which is true but it isn’t the limits of the range’s ambitions. It would be hard to fit Bill Forsyth’s That Sinking Feeling or the John Mortimer adaptation Lunch Hour into such a scheme, […]
The Darjeeling Limited (2007) Wes Anderson’s Problem Play (Review)
You may not think of Wes Anderson fandom as a rough-and-tumble affair, but I’ve seen violent gang brawls – Louis Vuitton satchels thrown in anger, men savagely beaten with their own powder-blue loafers – erupt over the issue of what the Texan director’s worst film is. For me, it’s his […]
Tales from the Urban Jungle: Brute Force (1947) and The Naked City (1948) (Review)
Film noir’s spiritual home has always been the streets. With The Naked City, though, Jules Dassin made that spiritual home into a literal home. Previous films had cooked up bustling metropolitan locations on Hollywood sound-stages, but Dassin’s film was the first film to take advantage of the new lightweight cameras […]
Two Martial Arts Films: Russian Raid (2020) & Winners and Sinners (1983)
In its own way, the martial arts movie is as broad a church as anything. Other genres have their stock situations and standard plot beats, but the only beats martial arts cinema cares about are the ones delivered to the side of a goon’s skull. As long as the fighting […]