Despite being a hit on its 1952 release, The Sound Barrier is now one of the least-seen of David Lean’s films. A shame, as it represents an artist in the middle of a fascinating transition. Released just five years before The Bridge on the River Kwai, its daring spectacle points […]
Movies & Documentaries
Ken Russell: Great Composers (1965-7)(Review)
The music documentary is enjoying a boom period with the likes of 20,000 Days on Earth & Searching for Sugar Man receiving both critical and commercial acclaim, there’s also the channel defining content from the award-winning BBC Four. Staying with the British Broadcasting Corporation, it is easy to forget what […]
Ken Russell: The Great Passions (1965-7)(Review)
How many BBC arts documentaries of the 1960s do you think begin with the exhumation of a mummified corpse, lit by flickering torches and soundtracked by booming horror-movie music? Not many, I’ll wager, but then there weren’t many directors walking the corridors of Broadcasting House who resembled Ken Russell. For […]
Sheba, Baby (1975) Blaxploitation, PG style (Review)
On the face of it, we shouldn’t need to watch blaxploitation any more. As soon as Will Smith and Denzel Washington became viable Hollywood action movie stars, its USP of showing black actors in empowered, heroic roles was co-opted. This, though, ignores the pleasures of blaxploitation as a movie-making style; […]
Shooting Stars (1928) Unapologetically British Silent Film Glamour (Review)
It’s not often that I’m prescriptive about the way you choose to watch a film, but if you do get the BFI’s new dual-format edition of Anthony Asquith and A.V. Bramble’s pioneering British silent Shooting Stars, watch the extras first. The main bonus feature is a near-fifty minute compilation of […]
James White (2015) Christopher Abbott staggers in indie paint-by-number trauma drama (Review)
Independent film used to mean something, but with the rise of the internet, this has shifted 180 to the point where young filmmakers need to carve out their own niche in order to stand out from the staggering mass of people acting under the indie film umbrella. Joshua Mond along […]
Something Different / A Bagful of Fleas (1962-3) breezy, charming and fiercely political (Review)
Before we get into Second Run’s new release of Věra Chytilová’s debut film and the short that preceded it, let’s take a second to acknowledge that all of Chytilová’s 1960s work (barring her contribution to the 1965 anthology film Pearls of the Deep) is now available on British DVD. This […]
Nina Forever (2015) A fore-runner of the romantic Horror Sub-Genre (Review)
After gaining a massive amount of praise at The British Independent Film Awards and Frightfest, it’s easy to see why Nina Forever – the directorial debut from The Blaine Brothers – distinctly carves out its identity through considered execution and challenging conventions. Following a tragic motor accident which led to […]
Uzumasa Limelight (2014) A Wistful, one-of-a-kind Samurai Movie (Review)
Few genres associated closely with a nation have lasted as long as the samurai has for Japan, most follow the path of the Western in that they had a golden era with occasional post-boom pockets. The latest film to be released on Third Window Films, Uzumasa Limelight, concerns itself with […]
Fixed Bayonets! (1951) Gleefully old-fashioned Korean War pulp poetry (Review)
Before he was a director, Samuel Fuller fought in World War II and worked as a tabloid journalist. The former experience shaped his politics, the latter shaped his sensibility. If Fuller’s films sometimes seem simplistic, their simplicity is at least born of sincerity. He knows what he believes, and he […]