The history of cinema is fascinating when journeying back to its origins, illustrating how much has changed over the course of time. Take science fiction and horror as the prime examples, both are worlds away from their respective zeitgeists – almost as if comparing night with day. Comedy is different […]
Reviews
Baskin (2015) Nightmare Hell Horror fresh out of Turkey (Review)
For seasoned horror and gore aficionados, Baskin popped up as if from nowhere, whetting many people’s appetites as a brutal gore-fest, something that could satisfy an itch with more substance than other crass films that have emerged on the festival circuit. A Directorial Turkish debut from director Can Evrenol, Baskin starts […]
Burroughs: The Movie (1983) A Bizarre treat for fans of William S. Boroughs (Review)
Howard Brookner was a film student at NYU with Jim Jarmusch and Tom DiCillo when he made a low-budget observational documentary about the most groundbreaking and original American writer of the 20th century, William S Burroughs. It should have been the start of a career to match his classmates, both […]
The Taviani Brothers Collection (1977-1984) Reality and Fiction Working Together (Review)
What does realism mean to you? Too often, it’s discussed as if it’s self-evident: a realistic film is one that resembles reality. To say that, though, is to unconsciously admit a number of blind spots. How do we judge something to be realistic? Is it really true, or just a […]
Absolute Beginners (1986) More than meets the eye with added David Bowie (Review)
Alongside The Mission and Revolution, Absolute Beginners was accused of destroying the British film industry in the mid to late 1980s. It was bad luck for Goldcrest, the studio behind Julian Temple’s lavish production, as they backed-up all three films, released them at nearly the same time, and in turn, […]
Andrei Rublev (1966) One of the greatest historical epics ever made (Review)
Following on from Ivan’s Childhood, Curzon Artificial Eye continues their retrospective on Russian Grandmaster Andrei Tarkovsky with Andrei Rublev. The second feature from Russia’s most celebrated film export follows the titular fifteenth-century iconographer as he walks the lands – starting when he is young and idealistic and ending 3 hours […]
Mustang (2015) a timeless debut of rare and bullish brilliance (Review)
Prisons aren’t just buildings to house and punish those who have wronged society, they can also be a psychological and social construct, the flexibility of this notion has seen it bend and twist into one of fiction’s most well-travelled concepts. As far as cinema is concerned, the path well-travelled begins […]
Play On! Shakespeare in Silent Film (2016) Pulls off the Impossible (Review)
Silent Shakespeare? It might seem to invalidate the very reason why Shakespeare has been a cultural constant for centuries now, but it was popular in its time. When cinema was invented it was widely considered a novelty rather than a serious art form, so it was necessary to prove it could […]
Around China with a Movie Camera (2015) A Must for Film Historians (Review)
Shot between 1900 – 1948 and spanning over 100 films, Around China with a Movie Camera takes the viewer on a cinematic journey of the country in question. The film explores the sights that China has to offer, but it is not done in the traditional documentary fashion with modern-day […]
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) Still a powerful, morality Western 75 years later (Review)
The introduction is one of the most underrated aspects of home video. One as good as Peter Stanfield provides on Arrow’s release of William A. Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident transforms a film – providing a context, drawing attention to details and being about the most proactive way to enhance a […]