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 […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
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 […]
Lost in America (1985): some kind of comic masterpiece (Review)
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 […]
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 […]