The BFI’s Flipside label has a reputation for unearthing the seamier, seedier side of British cinema, which is true but it isn’t the limits of the range’s ambitions. It would be hard to fit Bill Forsyth’s That Sinking Feeling or the John Mortimer adaptation Lunch Hour into such a scheme, […]
Movies & Documentaries
Threshold (2020) The modern hustle of regional horror (Review)
The last Arrow Video film I covered was Clapboard Jungle, an incredible resource for the would-be filmmaker. One piece of advice reiterated by many interviewees is to get out into the world and make something. The regularly regurgitated advice is to use any immediately available camera – even a smartphone […]
Raw (2016) Raw in subtext & execution in all the right ways (Review)
Do animal lovers prevent themselves from eating meat because they love animals? There is a scene early into Raw that says otherwise. Justine (Garance Miller), a lifelong vegetarian, could not care less for animals. She is disgusted by the presence, the shedding hair, and the presumed stench of a dog in close […]
Secrets & Lies (1996) The Other Big British Film of 1996 (Review)
Britain in the 1990s. What a time to be alive. We had Britpop, we had the dawn of a new era in terms of New Labour, we had great fashions, we had great art, and we almost, almost, had football coming home. We also had some great movies too. When […]
The Darjeeling Limited (2007) Wes Anderson’s Problem Play (Review)
You may not think of Wes Anderson fandom as a rough-and-tumble affair, but I’ve seen violent gang brawls – Louis Vuitton satchels thrown in anger, men savagely beaten with their own powder-blue loafers – erupt over the issue of what the Texan director’s worst film is. For me, it’s his […]
Clapboard Jungle (2020) Part Vlog Part Vital Tool for the aspiring filmmaker (Review)
New Arrow Video documentary, Clapboard Jungle, is a curious creation. It’s a documentary about filmmaking that covers multiple strands almost simultaneously. It’s a personal diary of director Justin McConnell as he grapples with the existential angst of being an up and coming writer-director who is seeing their peers, whether talented […]
Silent Action (1975) Sergio Martino, EuroCrime and the emergence of a fantastic new label (Review)
Among fans of European genre cinema of the 70s, Sergio Martino is best known for his killer run within the Giallo sub-genre: all the colours of the dark (1972), Torso (1973), Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972), The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh […]
Tales from the Urban Jungle: Brute Force (1947) and The Naked City (1948) (Review)
Film noir’s spiritual home has always been the streets. With The Naked City, though, Jules Dassin made that spiritual home into a literal home. Previous films had cooked up bustling metropolitan locations on Hollywood sound-stages, but Dassin’s film was the first film to take advantage of the new lightweight cameras […]
The Frightened City (1961) Connery on the Cusp (Review)
Released to StudioCanal’s Vintage Classics Collection this week, The Frightened City is a 1961 British noir from Canadian-born director John Lemont about protection rackets in London’s West End. It’s a solid, if fairly unremarkable gangland thriller, one which would perhaps be lost to the mists of time were it not […]
Death Has Blue Eyes (1975) Skittish Greek Misadventures with the Lads (Review)
Greece isn’t exactly at the top of world cinema exporters – however, two names that have any cultural cache are Yorgos Lanthimos and the late Theo Angelopoulos. Even with that being the case, the country still managed to produce one of the nastier examples of 1970s horror, Nico Mastorakis’s Island […]