As my colleague Rob Simpson keeps having to point out, a film doesn’t need likeable characters to be good. It doesn’t even need smart characters. There’s a whole subgenre of noir fiction from Jim Thompson through to the Coen brothers which takes knuckle-dragging characters doing repellent things and alchemises them into […]
Movies & Documentaries
Texas Adios (1966) A glimpse of the Spaghetti Westerns yet to come (Review)
Say one thing for Texas Adios, the 1966 spaghetti Western reissued on Blu-Ray by Arrow Video; it doesn’t hang around. A friend of mine likes to needle me by describing Westerns as a genre where you spend eighty minutes waiting for one action scene, but Texas Adios’s first action scene […]
Once Upon a Time in China Trilogy (1991-93) The Birth of Jet Li’s Super Stardom (Review)
The 1990s was a tumultuous time for Hong Kong Martial Arts cinema. Its favourite son, Jackie Chan, was too big to fail as such he was doing whatever he wanted on Golden Harvest’s payroll, Sammo Hung was closer to a director than the action star that made his name, Yuen […]
De Niro & De Palma: The Early Films (1968-70)(Review)
The world is very aware of who Robert De Niro is, he is held by many to be one of the greatest actors of his (very good) generation, if not all time. Brian De Palma is a bit more of a complicated character much to the point where you can […]
Elvira Mistress of the Dark (1989) the highest of high camp comedy-horror (Review)
In 1989, Cassandra Peterson was nominated for a Razzie for worst actress for her role as Elvira in this goofball horror comedy. The fact that she lost out to Liza Minelli (who was actually nominated for 2 worst actress Razzies that year), is some kind of crooked justice. Whilst it’s […]
The Early Films of Olivier Assayas (1986 & 1989)(Review)
In 2007 Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni died on the same day, prompting a lot of critics to wonder who would take their place in culture. For a while I wondered this as well; who would make work like Persona or The Passenger for our era, creating new stories and […]
A Raisin In The Sun (1961) a call to arms for the downtrodden, hardworking majority (Review)
With a screenplay by the original playwright (Lorraine Hansberry), and featuring Sidney Poitier, a debut from Louis Gossett Jr, and a powerful cast of African-American performers, A Raisin In The Sun provides us with a kitchen-sink drama for the Civil Rights movement. Set in Chicago, and based on Hansberry’s 1959 […]
The Uninvited (1944) a Chiller… but not like we know it (Review)
The Uninvited is a curious supernatural “thriller”, set on the southwest coast of England. The film is Lewis Allen’s adaptation of a Dorothy Mcardle story (Uneasy Freehold), in which composer Rick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland), and his sister Pamela (Ruth Hussey), fall in love with an old, mouldering property whilst holidaying […]
Georgy Girl (1966) the good, bad and ugly of Swinging 60’s London (Review)
‘Georgy Girl Is Big!’ so screamed the tagline on the posters of Silvio Narizzano’s 1966 swinging London set film. It had two meanings of course and the first was to imply the nature of its central character Georgy; an ungainly selfless young woman, big of frame and of heart, played […]
The Tree of Life (2011) A film we’ll never stop talking about (Review)
In scale alone it’s the extra of the year: Criterion UK’s new release of Terrence Malick’s 2011 Palme d’Or winner The Tree of Life comes with a bonus disc featuring a completely new cut of the film. From start to finish, Malick was the driving force behind the re-edit – […]