The history of cinema is fascinating when journeying back to its origins, illustrating how much has changed over the course of time. Take science fiction and horror as the prime examples, both are worlds away from their respective zeitgeists – almost as if comparing night with day. Comedy is different […]
Rob Simpson
Chief Editor
Host of the Uncut Network. With a love of movies kicked off by Hong Kong Action and Claymation Monsters, Rob has forever been cradled in the bosom of Cinema. Rob has his hands in many a pie, including no budget film making. Filthy
Andrei Rublev (1966) One of the greatest historical epics ever made (Review)
Following on from Ivan’s Childhood, Curzon Artificial Eye continues their retrospective on Russian Grandmaster Andrei Tarkovsky with Andrei Rublev. The second feature from Russia’s most celebrated film export follows the titular fifteenth-century iconographer as he walks the lands – starting when he is young and idealistic and ending 3 hours […]
Mustang (2015) a timeless debut of rare and bullish brilliance (Review)
Prisons aren’t just buildings to house and punish those who have wronged society, they can also be a psychological and social construct, the flexibility of this notion has seen it bend and twist into one of fiction’s most well-travelled concepts. As far as cinema is concerned, the path well-travelled begins […]
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) Still a powerful, morality Western 75 years later (Review)
The introduction is one of the most underrated aspects of home video. One as good as Peter Stanfield provides on Arrow’s release of William A. Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident transforms a film – providing a context, drawing attention to details and being about the most proactive way to enhance a […]
Suture (1993) Philosophy of the self and the elephant in the room (Review)
A keen suspension of disbelief is key to enjoy genres founded on wonder, whimsy and exaggeration, not having a healthy penchant to believe the unbelievable locks swathes of the more imaginative hues of cinema behind locked doors. Curious it is then that 1993’s existentialist noir about the reconstruction of the […]
Our Little Sister (2015) The generous, life-affirming heart of Modern Japanese cinema (Review)
Hirokazu Koreeda emerged on British shores in 2013 with the dual release of I Wish and Like Father Like Son, before that he was known only to those adventurous few who delved deep into World Cinema. His work inherited the humility of Ozu and Mizoguchi, only he has added a […]
Scott of the Antarctic (1948) A timelessly charming tale of survival (Review)
Ealing proving once again that didn’t just deal in black comedies concerned with a brand of pure Britannia that has since been consigned to history with Studio Canal’s release of Scott of the Antarctic. Sometimes Hitchcock editor, Charles Frend directs the now fabled story of Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated South […]
Victoria (2015) The German Crime film that cracked the “one-take” nut (Review)
Even as far back as 1948, the one-take film was aspiration with Hitchcock’s Rope. An endeavour similar to Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman or Gustavo Hernández’s The Silent House, both he and Hitchcock used the practice of clean plates, filming areas or objects featuring no actors or moving objects to cut […]
Journey to the Shore (2015) trades in the haunted house for a ghost story (Review)
Horror has many go to Monsters; one will have its turn in the limelight before passing it on to the next. The subtleties of titles like the Uninvited or the Haunting have subsided only to be replaced by the cacophony of Amityville Horror or Insidious. However, take Japan or many […]
Outlaw Gangster VIP (1968/9) Making a star of Tetsuya Watari (Review)
The term ‘Studio film’ within the contemporary vernacular is used as a derogatory statement; a catch-all to encompass a focus on making money over quality cinema. While that is certainly also true in Japan, there are also a selection of studios that have gone down in legend – Toho, and […]