Back to 1942 is one of the bleakest movies of recent years, Feng Xiaogang directed a horrifying presentation on the human cost of war. The 2012 movie showed an invading army turning their weapons on civilians, people selling their children just so said offspring can eat and enough self-sacrifice to […]
Movies & Documentaries
Metropolitan (1990) Whit Stillman’s Comedy of High Society Manners (Review)
It’s always a risk for a film to give you too many pointers about how to read it; most people like to work that out for themselves. But I was very charmed by a moment about halfway into Whit Stillman’s 1990 debut Metropolitan – reissued on Region 2 Blu-Ray by […]
Intimate Lighting (1965) Czech New Wave as a light, comedic, endless rewatchable delight (Review)
After their great re-release of Juraj Herz’s ‘The Cremator’ on Blu-Ray late last year, Second Run have kindly followed that up by restoring another fan favourite Czech title – Ivan Passer’s ‘Intimate Lighting’. Like his close friend and collaborator, the late Miloš Forman, Passer is uninterested in creating a melodramatic […]
St Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) Roger Corman extends himself beyond horror and exploitation with interesting results (Review)
There are a lot of people who found success in their mid 20s, and I am usually jealous of them. But even I draw the line at Al Capone, despite admiring how he rose to the top of Chicago’s busiest criminal enterprise by age 26. Something about him holds me […]
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972)(Review)
Let’s aim our tranquillisers squarely at the elephant in the room, first: The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is a terrible title. It was a bad name for the Pulitzer-winning play by Paul Zindel, on which it is based, and then became a worse one for a movie. […]
Early Hou Hsiao-hsien: Three Films 1980-1983 (Review)
“Success is elusive. Something lost is difficult to find. Progress takes time.” That quote comes from the last film on Eureka Masters of Cinema’s new Blu-Ray collection of early Hou Hsaio-Hsien films, 1983’s The Boys From Fengkuei. After watching all three films in the set, it’s hard not to interpret […]
They Came To A City (1944) Dearden and JB Priestley meet for an unwieldy thought experiment (Review)
I’m not really a big fan of overtly political works since they can force an idea upon the viewer. Other times a film or television series that is based on politics but isn’t political is something that I could get behind. So I had a bit of difficulty when it […]
Cure (1997) Modern Horror Masterpiece about Evil’s absolute power to indoctrinate
In 1999, Hideo Nakata’s gloomy horror masterwork, Ring, popularised a wave of horror films from Japan that took the world by storm under the banner of J-Horror. J-Horror, like any genre or movement, has its line-up of standards and tropes, with the harsh digital look of muted Green, Grey and […]
The Awful Truth (1937) Screwball comedy, Oscars and the Politics of Laughter (Review)
It is almost inconceivable today that Academy voters would award an Oscar to the director of a light, farcical comedy. But in 1938, not only did Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth get the trophy, it won at the expense of that year’s other McCarey effort, Make Way For Tomorrow, a […]
Le Corbeau (1943) All too relevant given the current state of global politics (Review)
A moment on the pen; a lifetime on the soul. Set in a small French village, Le Corbeau is the dark tale of a number of residents who find themselves the target of poison pen letters that condemn their perceived immoral behaviour. The primary target for the letters is the […]