Reputations are a slippery thing, and directors sometimes start their career with one that completely contradicts the one they get later. The French critics who would come to damn Spielberg as the McDonalds of cinema had previously swooned over the existential spareness of Duel. Likewise, after works like O Brother, […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
In Defence Of – Invincible
Director: Werner Herzog Content: Film Studio: Werner Herzog Filmproduktion Synopsis: Zishe Breitbart moves to Berlin to seek his fortune as a strongman, and comes under the management of the hypnotist and fraudulent mystic Hanussen. But this is 1932, and the Jewish Breitbart is increasingly disturbed when he realises what Germany’s […]
The Hired Hand (1971) A Long Lost-Masterpiece from Peter Fonda (Review)
Following the industry-reshaping success of Easy Rider, the film’s three stars Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda took the opportunity to direct personal projects on a studio budget. In the end, all three of them flopped, though they each have plenty of interest for students of those actors’ screen […]
Stella Cadente (2014) Shakespeare’s Richard II as a Peter Greenaway film (Review)
Anybody wondering whether Stella Cadente is a traditional royal costume drama will have their questions answered about twenty-six minutes in, when the King’s assistant goes out to the woods to have sex with a melon while an aria from Madame Butterfly plays. As confident in its own eccentricities as you’d […]
Looking for Richard (1996) Al Pacino of the creative process and Shakespeare (Review)
“It has always been a dream of mine to communicate how I feel about Shakespeare to other people”, Al Pacino says early on in Looking for Richard. Most actors probably feel the same way, and they communicate it through acting. Pacino wanted to do something bigger. Stepping behind the camera, he […]
Christine (1983) The “Ugly-Duckling” of Carpenter’s 80s run gets the respect it deserves (Review)
As culture becomes more fixated on nostalgia, we’re going to have to spend a lot of time reassessing what happened two or three decades ago. At the moment that means the Eighties, with everything from Stranger Things to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles drawing from The Me Decade. Comparing nostalgia for the eighties to […]
The Hills Have Eyes (1977) The Evolution of Wes Craven, the rule-breaker (Review)
At the beginning and the end of 1977’s The Hills Have Eyes – now reissued on Blu-Ray by Arrow home video – clouds of dust blow through the desert-like an all-American version of Hammer’s oppressive fog. It’s an early sign that writer-director Wes Craven is more concerned with atmosphere and […]
Paris Blues (1962) Comes to Life with the Jazz and the Style (Review)
Here’s a less-than-fun fact; when Martin Ritt’s Paris Blues was released in 1961, the opening flirtation between Paul Newman and Diahann Carroll would have been a crime in 22 American states. Released on Blu-Ray fifty-five years later as part of the British Film Institute’s Black Star season, it is noticeable […]
Cosmos (2015) Żuławski ransacks his knowledge of art and pop culture for the most surreal swansong (Review)
It’s a strange world, but has it ever looked stranger than it does through the eyes of Witold Gombrowicz and Andrzej Żuławski? Żuławski was the late Polish director whose film Possession became quite the artiest thing on the Department of Public Prosecutions’ infamous ‘video nasties’ list. Gombrowicz was one of a generation of European authors who […]
One Million Years BC (1966) Harryhausen, Dinosaurs and the legendary bikini (Review)
If you’re a man of a certain age who remembers getting strange feelings when their parents let them watch the dinosaur movie on TV, then you already know whether or not you should buy StudioCanal’s Blu-Ray of One Million Years B.C. Don Chaffey’s film has an iconic stature for a […]