Coming to Blu-ray this week, Radiance follows up last year’s release of Bo Widerberg’s 1976 cult classic Man on the Roof with another masculine-sounding policier from the director: 1984’s The Man from Majorca. Like the previous effort, it’s a distinctly Scandinavian take on gritty New Hollywood cop movies, such as […]
Mark Cunliffe
Senior Contributor
Mark's first cinematic experience was watching the Cannon and Ball vehicle, The Boys in Blue. He hasn't looked back since. Hailing from Lancashire, he is an occasional contributor to Arrow DVD, writing booklet inlay essays on a variety of titles, including Children of Men and The Day of the Jackal. He has also written a chapter for Ste Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence's book, Scarred For Life Vol II. He is often found on Letterboxd, has appeared on the Talking Pictures podcast and also writes for We Are Cult, Horrified and America's left-leaning news outlet ZNetwork. He is also a regular contributor to the Geek Show's podcasts, including Pop Screen and the Uncut series.
Funny Girl (1968): A Star So Big the World Had to Sit Up and Take Notice
The Criterion Collection know what they’re doing releasing Funny Girl to Blu-ray in December. As the chill winds buffet outside and the rain lashes against the window, what better time is there to snuggle up with a film so warming and lengthy that it has an intermission? Better still, it’s […]
The Hop-Pickers (1964): When Prague Summer Turned to Spring
Last week, Second Run continued on their mission to rediscover seemingly forgotten cinematic gems from late twentieth century Eastern Europe and present them to our modern day Western eyes with the release of The Hop-Pickers (known as Starci na chmelu in its Czechoslovakia), a film that has been labelled the […]
Juggernaut (1974): Possibly the Most Accurate Film of Life in 70s Britain
To mark it’s fiftieth anniversary, Eureka Entertainment released Richard Lester’s 1974 movie Juggernaut (aka Terror on the Britannic) for the first time on Blu-ray last week. Featuring a stacked cast headed by Richard Harris and Omar Sharif, with David Hemmings, Anthony Hopkins, Shirley Knight, Ian Holm and Roy Kinnear in […]
Liverpool Story (2024) The Pool of Life
This is a documentary portrait of the year in the life of a city, Liverpool. Directed by Daniel Draper – the man behind a string of documentaries including Nature of the Best, a profile of veteran socialist Labour MP Dennis Skinner, and The Big Meeting about the annual Durham Miners […]
Slap the Monster on Page One (1972): A Still Relevent Look at Media Manipulation
Released to Blu-ray by Radiance this week, Slap the Monster on Page One is a 1972 thriller with a political conscience from director Marco Bellocchio. It stars the great Gian Maria Volonté as Bizanti, the editor of Il giornale, a fictitious right-wing Italian newspaper. The action takes place in Milan, […]
Rough Justice: Two New Shorts from the North West – Before the Law and Disposal (2024)
Before the Law is the follow up to Greater Manchester-based writer/director Brett Gregory’s stunning 2022 debut feature film, Nobody Loves You and You Don’t Deserve to Exist. A contemporary adaptation of Franz Kafka’s 1915 parable of the same name, contained within his novel, The Trial, it stars Andrew Joseph as […]
The Little Things & The Death of the House Party (2024): Two From Liverpool, With Love
I’m based in a little town called St Helens in Merseyside and, as regular readers of my reviews here at The Geek Show will know, that has made me ideally placed to be something of a local correspondent and champion of the increasingly exciting and steadily growing filmmaking community in […]
Convoy (1978) Peckinpah Takes a Surprising Route from Novelty Record to Box Office Smash
Have you an eyeball on this, good buddy? Sam Peckinpah’s pop cultural classic road movie Convoy, starring the recently departed Kris Kristofferson, Ali McGraw and Ernest Borgnine, is coming to Blu-ray on the StudioCanal label from 28th October, 10-4! For those of you who weren’t around during the days of […]
Haunted Ulster Live (2023) Ghostwatch… with Laughs (Review)
Arriving just in time for Halloween this year, Haunted Ulster Live is another addition to the horror subgenre that can perhaps best be described as “fake live Halloween broadcast”. Late Night with the Devil earned plenty of plaudits earlier this year, and back in 2018 Inside Number 9‘s Dead Line […]