Second Run dropped a bombshell of a box set dedicated to the films of Marc Isaacs, a British documentary filmmaker known for creating closed-off, intimate films with a cast of many memorable and sometimes eccentric personalities. It doesn’t matter if his contributors are small-time BNP supporters, nobody street sweepers, or […]
Movies & Documentaries
Wild Rose – London Film Festival 2018
“No black ties (far from it!). Although members may complain about the ticket prices, they are at least no higher than ordinary West End cinemas— which, considering the expense of putting on a film festival, is more than reasonable. We are non-competitive, feeling that it is impossible to choose […] […]
Monkey Shines (1988) Lesser Romero Doesn’t Mean Bad Romero (Review)
One of the issues I have always had with the 70s and 80s horror is George A. Romero. Not his movies as I love more of them than I don’t, more the way the industry dealt with him. First and foremost he was a satirist who wanted to tell stories […]
The Comfort of Strangers (1990) High-Art Horror? Erotica Thriller? or Both? (Review)
Paul Schrader’s 1990 film, The Comfort of Strangers, is an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s 1981 novel of the same name and boasts a screenplay by Harold Pinter. It tells the story of an attractive, middle-class British couple named Mary and Colin (Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett) who have arrived in […]
Eye of the Needle (1981) Rescue Under Fire (2017): Two War Reviews
The release of a book about Where Eagles Dare by no less a high-culture luminary than Geoff Dyer has us wondering: when did the war movie stop being a pillar of mainstream entertainment? The simple answer might be once the politics of war became divisive, but recent films like Lincoln […]
City of the Living Dead (1980) Gratuitously cruel and inappropriately violent fun (Review)
October is upon us once again and with Halloween lurching inexorably towards us, there is no better way to get into the spooky spirit than with a good old-fashioned schlocky horror B-movie. With that in mind, let us turn to face the ghastly visage of the 1980’s City of the […]
The Knack… and How to Get It (1965) caprice and candyfloss with a dark undercurrent (Review)
Navigating the Tricky Sexual Waters of the Past Through the Lens of a Comedy Puffball. Inspired by the original stage play by Ann Jellicoe, a leading proponent of the 1960s New Wave theatre, The Knack is a tale of a naïve northern lass, Nancy, (Rita Tushingham) who comes to live […]
House of Salem (2016) a confidently staged British occult-kidnap thriller debut (Review)
Sometimes you have to remind yourself that British people were frightened by things before the 1970s. Whether they’re sociopolitical (VIP paedophile rings, tensions with the EU and the Irish border) or cultural (strange electronic music, unnerving children’s programming), all of our modern nightmares come from the Glam Decade. James Crow’s […]
Redcon-1 (2018) the micro-budget zombie film with ants in its pants (Review)
Here we go again, Redcon-1. A thousand different websites for a thousand different zombie movies all say the same thing, this is one monster who has been exhausted way past the breaking point. In other news, rain is wet. I mock but in the past twenty years, you could probably […]
Madame (2017) A comedy of upper-class errors (Review)
Ah, Paris: City of Romance. You can tell from the get-go that our lead couple are artsy types. He wears Truman Capote glasses and she simply must cycle through the streets of Paree, an accordion trilling in her mind. So is our introduction to Anne and Bob Fredericks (Toni Colette […]