Released to Criterion this week is a film that caused shock and outrage in its native Italy upon its release in 1965. Marco Bellocchio’s feature debut Fists in the Pocket is a disquieting, macabre and unique work that seemed designed to ruffle a few feathers, not only in its desire […]
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 St Helens, he is an occasional contributor to Arrow DVD, writing booklet inlay essays on a variety of titles, including Children of Men and The Great Escape. He is a reviewer with IndieMDB and has also written a chapter for Ste Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence's book, Scarred For Life Vol II. Other sites he has written for include We Are Cult, Horrified, and America's left-leaning news outlet ZNetwork. Publications he has written articles for include Stat Magazine and the fanzine Undefined Boundary: The Journal of Psychick Albion. He is also a regular contributor to the Geek Show's podcasts, including Pop Screen and the Uncut series, and he can be found on Letterboxd.
Wanda (1970) A Glimpse of the Real New Hollywood? (Review)
April 17th sees the release to the Criterion Collection of Wanda, the first and only feature film from Barbara Loden, actor and wife of Elia Kazan. A landmark in US cinema’s independent movement, Wanda is set in the unglamorous sooty surroundings of eastern Pennsylvania’s industrial heartlands and features a central […]
Married to the Mob (1988) Jonathan Demme’s Wise Guy Screwball Farce (Review)
Radiance Films continues an impressive run in its debut year with a new 2K restoration release of Jonathan Demme’s hit 1988 farce Married to the Mob, the movie that launched Michelle Pfeiffer’s star into its bright ascendency. Pfeiffer stars as Angela de Marco, a young Long Island housewife whose unfaithful […]
This World Is Not My Own (SXSW 2023) (Review)
Receiving its world premiere at the SXSW festival this week is This World Is Not My Own, a film about a remarkable artist you’ve probably never heard of, yet by the time the credits roll she may well become a new favourite. Nellie Mae Rowe was born on the 4th […]
Letter to the Postman (2022) & Questions to the Filmmaker
In the final days of 2022, I happened upon an intriguing sixty-minute low-budget film. Entitled Letters to the Postman, it is an adaptation by British indie filmmaker Felix Dembinski of a short story by Robert Aickman which appeared in the author’s 1980 anthology Intrusions and proved to be his final […]
Linie 1 (1988): All Aboard for a German New Wave Musical (Review)
Your attention, please. The Blu-ray now arriving on this platform is the Studio Canal Cult Classics release of Linie 1, Reinhard Hauff’s 1988 big-screen adaptation of Germany’s second-most successful musical after Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. Linie 1 tells the story of Sunnie (Inka Victoria Goetschel), a young woman who, having learnt […]
The Cassandra Cat (aka Až přijde kocour) (1963); I See Your True Colours Shining Through (Review)
Jan Werich stands upon Ken Adam’s impressive space-age set, a fluffy white Persian cat with piercing blue eyes cradled in his arms. His co-star Sean Connery has stalked, somewhat like a bored panther, off the Pinewood sound stage as soon as the director called cut and now, the figures who […]
A Woman Kills (1968) Rediscovered Psychodrama Proves Problematic Today (Review)
Paris, the summer of 1968. A tumultuous time in French history, with situationists, students and striking workers bringing the capital to a standstill and threatening to change the country, and possibly the world, forever more. Revolution was in the air and its effects inevitably impacted art at the time. Cinematically, […]
The Munsters (2022) The Gags are Creakier than Slowly Opening Coffin Lids (Film Review)
Let’s face it, the 1960s were a weird time. A time when shows like The Addams Family and The Munsters could be produced purely for mainstream audiences, with the latter often beating it’s similarly macabre (and arguably now more fondly remembered) rival in the ratings war and only falling foul […]
Run Man Run (1968): A Picaresque Shaggy Dog Tale of a Tortilla Western (Review)
Receiving its Blu-ray world premiere from Eureka Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema series this week is the third and final Western from director Sergio Sollima, 1968’s Run, Man, Run. Set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, this ‘Zapata’ or ‘Tortilla’ Western (the names commonly given to these Italian-made oaters of […]