It would probably be impossible to make a genuinely anti-American film; as with rock and roll, the USA has contributed so much to the history of the art form that any political stance has to be tempered by the sheer cultural debt. Mike Figgis’s debut film Stormy Monday, now reissued […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
Daughters of the Dust (1991) recalls Tarkovsky, Resnais or any other sanctified European arthouse auteur you might care to name (Review)
Julie Dash’s debut film turned 25 last year, but even without the anniversary, this sumptuous BFI restoration would still probably exist. In the late 2010s, the film has become more relevant than ever. It is an inspiration for a new generation of African-American directors – Ava DuVernay has repeatedly cited […]
Stockholm, My Love (2016) The audacity that marks out the best documentary-fiction hybrids is missing (Review)
It’s not unknown for film directors to start their career as critics, but Mark Cousins is one of the rare breed who practice both disciplines at the same time. As such, it can be hard to avoid looking for connections, seeing the criticism and films as the left hemisphere and […]
Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith (2016) it’s a tribute to life, in all its messy glory (Review)
Now here’s a real curio, and one you might be utterly beguiled by. Minute Bodies is a compilation of work by the British biologist and pioneering filmmaker F. Percy Smith and his colleague and editor Mary Field. Smith was quite a celebrity in his day, cultivating an eccentric domestic-boffin image […]
Mulholland Drive (2001) It’s no wonder David Lynch’s work inspires such devotion (Review)
“Nah, you’re not thinkin’. You’re too busy being a smart-alec to be thinkin’” The Cowboy If you’ve never seen David Lynch’s 2001 Cannes Best Director winner Mulholland Drive, it’s probably worth stopping reading and buying Studio Canal’s new Blu-Ray restoration right now. That’s normally the kind of recommendation critics save […]
Madame De… (1953) Much more satisfying than high-society glitz and melancholy (Review)
If you know anything about the German director Max Ophüls, you probably know Stanley Kubrick’s famous quote to the effect that his camera could pass through walls. Watching the BFI’s new sumptuous restoration of 1953’s Madame de…, one of his final films, it’s easy to see what Stanley meant. James […]
Why Modern Hollywood Hates Plot Twists
[WARNING: this article contains spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, all three Iron Man films, most of the Christopher Nolan Batman films, and, y’know, everything else.] Sitting down to watch Park Chan-Wook’s The Handmaiden recently, I experienced a pleasure I’d almost forgotten about; […]
The Informer (1929) 90-year-old silent political thriller feels timeless (Review)
There are features on the disc and in the booklet accompanying the BFI’s new dual-format release of Arthur Robison’s 1929 thriller The Informer describing how long and careful the restoration process was. Just as well; anyone under the delusion that a silent film could be restored in a couple of weeks […]
The Lady from Shanghai (1947) Orson Welles Infamously cut-to-pieces Noir Returns (Review)
Orson Welles once claimed he only saw thrillers as a means to an end, that if it wasn’t for the unfortunate necessity of getting films funded he wouldn’t have made any. As if to demonstrate this, he would often tell a story about the genesis of his famous noir, The […]
My 20th Century (1989) a full-on thermonuclear blast of intellectual, comic and sensory pleasure (Review)
“We live in the flicker”, Joseph Conrad famously wrote, referring to the breathless speed of technological advancement in the crossover from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. In addressing the same historical period, Ildikó Enyedi’s debut film My 20th Century – released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Second Run – […]