There are Elephants in the room that are both literal and metaphorical in the Party, the latest release from Eureka. One appears in the final chaotic throes of the titular party and the other is represented by Peter Sellers in brownface adopting an Indian accent. Positioned somewhere between the horrifically […]
Reviews
The Yakuza (1974) A seminal product of Hollywood’s disillusioned 1970s output (Review)
Sydney Pollack’s 1974 neo-noir The Yakuza is one of those films that leaves you wondering what the hell was wrong with the cinema-going public and film critics of the day. Performing poorly at the box office and receiving (at best) mixed reviews, this east-meets-west thriller failed to cash in on […]
Blood Simple (1984) Remarkable for punching above its weight in every conceivable way (Review)
‘It’s the same old song/ but with a different meaning since you been gone’— Blood Simple is back in cinemas ahead of a blu-ray release by Studiocanal, and there’s no review more pithy than the Four Tops song given pride of place on the film’s soundtrack. I wasn’t even alive […]
The Howling (1981) The great werewolf transformation movie (Review)
Joe Dante is a beloved man, his films are among the most humble and darkly funny the genre world has to offer. His work is the point which light and dark intersect within the horror and science fiction cannons. That is true save for the exception, that one film which […]
The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl (2017) A Must-See for those feeling Adventurous (Review)
This review has taken a long time. I left it, I left it some more, I left it longer and yet I still can’t wrap my head around the damn thing. The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl is my first exposure to director Masaaki Yuasa and I was not […]
Vampir Cuadecuc (1971) A Surprisingly Sensual and Beautiful avant-garde Vampire Movie (Review)
Sometime in the early 2000s, a Peruvian government spokesman was forced to testily deny online rumours that some of the country’s cabinet were vampires. “A government cannot go around sucking the blood of its people”, the spokesman claimed, inviting the obvious rejoinder; which government has ever refrained from this? The […]
Certain Women (2016) a grown-up, unironic, realist film about ordinary people going through ordinary challenges (Review)
It’s always an interesting statement of values when a prestige home video label decides to release a recent film. Everyone agrees on Kurosawa, Lang and Welles, but which modern director would you put in their company? In America, the Criterion Collection has got behind Wes Anderson so consistently that it’s […]
Kills on Wheels (2016) Two brilliant, searingly honest films flimsily stuck together (Review)
Representation is the big issue – who is having their stories told and which actors are being deprived of acting opportunities. Unfortunately, race and gender are as far as this dialogue has been extended. People who have lifelong disabilities either by accident or birth are seeing opportunities hoovered up by […]
Song to Song
Released on DVD and download by StudioCanal, the history of Terrence Malick’s Song to Song goes back to the summer of 2011, when attendees at Austin, Texas’s famous South by Southwest music festival saw the director filming Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara in the crowds. Malick had just won the […]
Dunkirk (1958) A poignant and near peerless World War II Movie (Review)
As a child obsessed with war, I well remember watching Dunkirk, Leslie (father of Barry) Norman’s 1958 film that depicted the events of May-June 1940, when the besieged soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force were stranded on the coast of France, and the combined efforts of the Royal Navy and […]