Introducing himself to various people on a road trip across America, David Howard explains his project as follows: “We’ve dropped out of society”. Yet the first stop he and his wife Linda make on their journey is Las Vegas, a town whose inhabitants live, as the Joker so sagely informs […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
Breeder (2020): reclaiming the torture horror? (Review)
The 2000s cycle of torture-themed horror – commonly referred to as “torture porn”, and my, doesn’t that term get you some looks when you casually use it around people who aren’t obsessed with minor horror subgenres – may be the only cinematic trend brought down by a billboard. Advertising for […]
Host (2020): as good on Blu-Ray as it was streaming (Review)
The call is coming from inside the computer! Horror fans have fought and largely won the battle for their preferred genre to be respected as art. It’s worth acknowledging, though, that part of the genre’s power comes from how disreputable it can be. The subterranean status of horror licenses it […]
Charade (1963) one perfect story-telling machine (Review)
For a decade which produced some of the most enduring, beloved hits in American cinema history – everything from The Sound of Music to Psycho – it can be hard to love 1960s Hollywood in toto. The Golden Age was over, the 1970s New Hollywood was yet to be born, […]
Rams (2020): not quite the GOAT, but a touching shaggy sheep story (Review)
Hollywood’s voracious consumption of other countries’ IP has made it easy to identify when a film has been Americanised, but what do we expect when a film transfers from Iceland to Australia? Grímur Hákonarson’s 2015 film Rams was voted the second-best Icelandic film of all time by the Icelandic website […]
A Rainy Day in New York (2019): and a grim day for Woody Allen fans (Review)
You might have missed it, but A Rainy Day in New York briefly became the first Woody Allen film to hit number one at the global box office. This is, admittedly, because it was May 2020 and nothing else was out – a strong showing in South Korea was enough […]
Liberté (2019) If you go down to the woods today… (Review)
There’s an image late on in Albert Serra’s Liberté which seems to contain something of the film in its entirety. A woman is walking through the woods, the scene of an orgy held by decadent aristocrats exiled from the court of France’s last king Louis XVI. She is in period […]
2020 Films You Might Have Missed…
The New World (three cuts, 2005-8): choose your own adventure (Review)
Terrence Malick is often caricatured as the Fotherington-Tomas of cinema, whose tendency to wander around saying hullo birds hullo trees hullo skies can appear ridiculous in modern-day films like Lawless [5]. If you want to see Malick’s style and thematic concerns in a world where they make absolute, perfect sense, […]
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Two Takes by William Greaves (1968/2005) red-hot takes (Review)
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Two Takes by William Greaves is the new Blu-Ray release from Criterion UK. It contains genuine footage of the Roswell incident, cast-iron evidence of voter fraud, and natural health secrets that THEY don’t want you to know. None of the preceding sentence is true, but if I hadn’t come […]