‘Orchestra Rehearsal’ saw Federico Fellini strip back his surreal tendencies and channelled his energy into something more tangible and less wild. Released in 1978, ‘Orchestra Rehearsal’ is set in one, large, barren hall. A wry voice-over explains that this place was once the burial site of three Popes and seven […]
Reviews
Brakes (2016) An interesting debut with an interesting spin on the Rom-Com (Review)
London based actress Mercedes Grower makes her screenwriting and directorial debut with Brakes, a film that couldn’t be any more lo-fi if it tried. Episodic and improvisational in feel, Brakes is a multi-stranded ensemble piece that explores what it is to fall in and out of love in contemporary London. […]
Phantom Thread (2017) the mother of all complexes (Review)
The expectation that goes with the release of a new Paul Thomas Anderson movie gets bigger and bigger every time. Ever since the acclamations for There Will Be Blood, the director has often found himself being touted (alongside one or two others) as the next heir to Kubrick. And it’s probably […]
Michael (1924) Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Phantom Thread (Review)
When’s a good time to reissue a film? Had Eureka Masters of Cinema put out this Blu-Ray reissue of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Michael last year, it might have been a valuable contribution to the fiftieth anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain. As it is, it hits shelves in […]
The Colour of Pomegranates (1969) impenetrably profound and dazzlingly superficial (Review)
Maybe you find that challenging, or intimidating, or mind-numbing, or somewhere between all three. If so, I’m not exactly sweetening the pot if I tell you that the film is a series of oblique, poetic tableaux vivants that symbolically illustrate the inner and outer life of the 18th century Armenian […]
Sword of Doom (1966) one of the highest watermarks in Samurai cinema (Review)
The title of any given movie is supremely important, as many adage’s state first impressions matter and for any film that title is where we make that impression. Looking at the UK catalogue of Criterion, we can separate a movie title into two camps – we have the abstract, like […]
House (1977) Completely within its own erratic, mesmerising orbit (Review)
There’s a tiresome tendency among Westerners to squeal “wtf japan lol” every time a Japanese film exhibits a minor eccentricity, but sometimes you have to acknowledge a film is very strange. That’s the case with 1977’s House, now released on Blu-Ray by Eureka Masters of Cinema. House was a massive hit […]
Strangled (2016) less reinventing the wheel and more a threadbare example of true crime cinema (Review)
Montage Pictures (a subsidiary of Eureka) debuted with two unheard titles from the outer reaches of world cinema last year; Argyis Papadimitropoulis’s slow-burning drama, ‘Suntan’, and Attila Till’s wheelchair-bound hitman movie, ‘Kills on Wheels’. Following in a similar vein is Árpád Sopsits’s downbeat thriller, ‘Strangled’. Based on real-life events, ‘Strangled’ […]
A Touch of Sin (2013) few filmmakers have their finger on the pulse of the developing Chinese identity like Jia Zhangke (Review)
For the longest of times, the idea of Chinese film didn’t really stretch past the borders of Hong Kong and its legendary action cinema. It’s only been in recent years that mainland China has found its way onto the global market, for a country with such a complex modern political […]
The Mystery of Picasso (1956) A meeting of Auteurs, Picasso & Clouzot (Review)
There isn’t one set-in-stone way to make an art documentary, because there isn’t one set-in-stone way to appreciate art. Those who believe art should stand on its own, or trigger some kind of personal reading, may feel that the work is diminished by too much context and explanation. That seems […]