Václav Marhoul’s WWII Eastern European-set film opens with a boy’s pet ferret being set alight and burned alive by a group of bullies. The sight of the ferret, disorientated, panicked and squealing in agony as it attempts the impossible and outrun the flames that so quickly engulf its body, ought […]
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.
Walkabout (1971): The Loss of Innocence and the Birth of Aussie New Wave (Review)
Coming to limited edition Blu-ray this week via the Second Sight label is Nicolas Roeg’s atmospheric, 1971 masterpiece Walkabout; a coming-of-age drama like no other, one which effectively heralded in the Australian New Wave movement. Starring Jenny Agutter, the director’s son Luc Roeg and indigenous Australian actor David Gulpilil, the […]
Tenderness: The Past is a Foreign Country in Martin Šulík’s (1991) Debut (Review)
Released in 1991, Tenderness (or Neha as it is known in its native Slovak) is director Martin Šulík’s debut full-length feature, one which proved to be a groundbreaking production for post-Communist Slovakia. The film tells the story of Simon, a solitary young student played by Géza Benkõ, and commences with […]
Britannia Hospital (1982) Testing the Nation’s Health (Review)
The Mick Travis trilogy of films which began with if…. in 1968 and continued with O Lucky Man! in 1973 concluded in 1982 with Britannia Hospital. It was a film that also effectively ended the career of the director, Lindsay Anderson, as near-universal critical condemnation saw its release amputated by […]
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) The Sexual or the Spiritual? (Review)
Released to Blu-ray by Arrow Academy this last week, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is the renowned Japanese new wave filmmaker Nagisa Ōshima’s 1983 adaptation of Sir Laurens van der Post’s semi-autobiographical works, The Seed and the Sower from 1963 and The Night of the New Moon from 1970, each inspired […]
Husbands (1970): Hard Going, But Intentionally So (Review)
If you want a divisive film, look no further than Husbands, released on Criterion Blu-ray from June 9th. On it’s release in 1970, John Cassavetes drama polarised critics and audiences alike. Jay Cocks of Time magazine described it as “one of the best movies anyone will ever see. It is […]
Snowpiercer (2013) Next Stop, Class Warfare (Review)
The film now arriving on Blu-ray this week is Snowpiercer. UK Home media apologise for the delay, which was due to a taste failure from Harvey Weinstein. I mean, there’s late and there’s very late. I actually think I’ve spent a similar amount of time waiting for Snowpiercer as I […]
The Family Way: Hayley & Hywel 4Eva (Review)
It’s perhaps a measure of how London-centric our society is that if you were to mention playwright Bill Naughton to anyone then those who had heard of him at least would tell you that he wrote Alfie, the 1963 stageplay about a cockney Casanova that has been twice made into […]
The Strange One: Homoeroticism, Hazing and the Hays Code (Review)
The Strange One was one of only two feature films directed by Jack Garfien, an Auschwitz survivor who sadly passed away on December 30th last year, aged 89. Based upon the novel and play End as a Man (the title the film was released under in UK cinemas) by Calder […]
Dreamland (2019) Canadians can be rather quirky people (Review)
There are not many films set in Luxembourg. But films about a cadaverous hitman who gets a sudden attack of conscience and sets out to rescue an innocent teenage girl from her fate as a vampire’s child bride…set in Luxembourg? Well, they’re even rarer. Welcome to Dreamland. Bruce McDonald, the […]