For most filmgoers, Joshua Oppenheimer emerged fully-formed out of nowhere with his landmark 2012 documentary The Act of Killing. A horrifyingly intimate portrait of elderly death squad leaders in Indonesia, it fused fearless journalism with surreal, fantastical black comedy – a mix which earned the film the support of Werner […]
Movies & Documentaries
Ivan’s Childhood (1962) Once you’ve seen it, you won’t want to live in a world without it (Review)
Film history tends to invite less counterfactual speculation than military or political history, but here’s one for you: what if Ivan’s Childhood, now reissued by Curzon Artificial Eye, had never been made? Because that really did come close to happening. During production, source author Vladimir Bogomolov rejected a draft of […]
A Month in the Country (1987) An Elegant, overlooked film about the strength of the human spirit (Review)
The term ‘lost film’ is often aimed towards the early days of cinema. As movie lovers, the best we can do is just imagine what these silent classics would look like in our minds. However, film neglect isn’t the sole preserve of early cinema, it is rare but more recent […]
Our Little Sister (2015) The generous, life-affirming heart of Modern Japanese cinema (Review)
Hirokazu Koreeda emerged on British shores in 2013 with the dual release of I Wish and Like Father Like Son, before that he was known only to those adventurous few who delved deep into World Cinema. His work inherited the humility of Ozu and Mizoguchi, only he has added a […]
Richard III (1995) Ready to be reclaimed as a masterpiece (Review)
Ever since the Golden Age of Hollywood, Shakespeare adaptations have struggled to win a box-office take to match their prestige. The shining exception to the rule came during the 1990s, a period in which the Bard was so bankable that by the end of the decade Julie Taymor could get a green […]
The Cold Day in the Park (1969) The Lonely, Strange years of Altman, one for the hardcore fans (Review)
Robert Altman is one of Cinema’s most interesting voices, with his dense overlapping dialogue, compelling female leads, ensemble casts etc; of course, many would group these trademarks with his 70s productions. Through Nashville, M*A*S*H and McCabe and Mrs Miller, Altman was pivotal in defining the tone and outlook of Hollywood’s last golden age. Before and […]
The Club (2015) offers its characters nowhere to hide, no sunlight to enjoy, no corners to cower in (Review)
Whatever he did for his fourth film, Pablo Larraín must have known he needed to make a sharp turn. His first three films form such a comprehensive trilogy on life under Pinochet’s dictatorship that anything more would have risked tilling over old ground. His debut, Tony Manero, was a portrait of […]
Edvard Munch (1974) Peter Watkins fight to be free of genres, formats and cliches (Review)
As someone who works primarily in the documentary form, Peter Watkins probably doesn’t get asked where he gets his ideas. Not that there’s any need to – his 1974 epic Edvard Munch, released on Blu-Ray by Eureka Masters of Cinema, is the story of an intelligent man whose quest to […]
Scott of the Antarctic (1948) A timelessly charming tale of survival (Review)
Ealing proving once again that didn’t just deal in black comedies concerned with a brand of pure Britannia that has since been consigned to history with Studio Canal’s release of Scott of the Antarctic. Sometimes Hitchcock editor, Charles Frend directs the now fabled story of Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated South […]
The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave (1971) & The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)(Review)
The Giallo, an influential style of Italian thriller originated during the 1960s, was not known for moral statements. That said, there’s a perfect summation of the sub-genres attitudes in one aside from 1972’s The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, the second of two films by Emilio Miraglia remastered and reissued […]