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 […]
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.
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 […]
We Still Kill the Old Way (1967) An Enigmatic Tale of Crime and Corruption (Review)
Released on Blu-ray by Radiance is yet another slice of classic crime drama from Italian cinema – Elio Petri’s 1967 movie We Still Kill the Old Way, starring Gian Maria Volonté and Irene Papas. The film is an adaptation by Ugo Pirro of the 1966 novel To Each His Own […]
The Severed Sun (Fantastic Fest 2024)
Ever since I first clapped eyes on his 2018 short The Sermon, I’ve been assiduously following the work of Cornish based filmmaker Dean Puckett for the last five years. A folk horror tale about a homophobic church community living in rural isolation, the short was imbued with a wonderful 1970s aesthetic […]
Nothing But The Best (1964) A Blackly Satirical Second Cousin of the Kitchen Sink Movie (Review)
Released on Blu-ray by Studio Canal’s Vintage Classics label this week is Nothing But the Best, a rather undervalued and little seen black comedy from 1964 that stars Alan Bates. An adaptation by Frederic Raphael of a short story by American mystery writer Stanley Ellin, the film is directed by […]
Mississippi Mermaid (1969): Truffaut’s Misunderstood Tale of Mystery and Erotic Obsession (Review)
Released to Blu-ray by Radiance Films this week is Mississippi Mermaid, a 1969 Hitchcockian thriller from François Truffaut that tells of an obsessive love affair between Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve. By the late 1960s, Truffaut had long since earnt his spurs as an acclaimed auteur within the French New […]