Perhaps the biggest strength director Luc Besson has in his arsenal is his ability to construct an immediately endearing fantasy world. He does so with The Fifth Element, a sci-fi drama with sprinklings of comedy and whimsical light-heartedness, wrapped around a host of action set pieces, effective set and costume design, […]
Movies & Documentaries
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 […]
Story of a Love Affair (1950): lies, PIs and neorealism from Antonioni (Review)
Michelangelo Antonioni’s first feature film begins with a set of photographs being displayed for the camera and a warning that this won’t be the same old story. Already, he’s making promises: promises of narrative innovation, clearly, and promises that the camera – and therefore the viewer – will be active […]
The Woman in Black (1989): Supernatual Chiller à la Quatermass (Review)
England, 1923. A young London solicitor, Arthur Kidd (Adrian Rawlings), is sent to a small seaside town where a client, Mrs Drablow, has just died. His instructions are to arrange for the cataloguing and sale of her possessions. Whilst at her funeral, where the only other attendee is the estate […]
Three Edgar Allan Poe Adaptations Starring Bela Lugosi: Classic Horror Nirvana (Review)
Two of the most famous names in horror don’t come from the modern era, nor the 1980s which entire swathes of the online community cling to far too tightly, no, they come from the early sound era. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. History has forever painted as Karloff as Frankenstein […]
Mr. Vampire (1985) the audacity of hop (Review)
Your correspondent first heard of the Chinese legend of the jiangshi as a child, and found it the most frightening thing he had ever heard in his young life. As an adult, I’m not sure why. Yes, the jianghsi is a reanimated corpse that drains the life of the living, […]
Three Outlaw Samurai (1964) Satire and Chaos in Feudal Japan (Review)
For many, the samurai movie is the domain of Akira Kurosawa, with both the legendary director and chanbara (sword fighting movies) tied at the hip. Naturally, that isn’t true. That said, perception is reality by anything beyond Kurosawa being difficult to find; it’s getting better, but still – it’s not […]
Czechmate – In Search of Jiri Menzel (2018) a love letter to Czech New Wave (Review)
Let’s get the big thing out of the way first – and I mean big. The new Second Run Blu-Ray, CzechMate – In Search of Jíři Menzel, is a 448-minute documentary about Czech and Slovak cinema. It’s been cited as the longest Indian film ever made, and that’s a country […]
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 […]