Even now, at a point when the image of the buccaneering, risk-taking, out-on-a-limb male genius auteur is at a fairly low ebb, it feels taboo to say you like one of those artists’ more commercial works. Terry Gilliam, a man more buccaneering, risk-taking etc. etc. than most, made The Fisher […]
Reviews
The Great Escape (1963) Christmas Classics and the Issue of Historical Accuracy
The Great Escape (4K) is out now on Arrow Video Blu-Ray Alex’s Archive – The Great Escape (1963)
Funny Girl (1968): A Star So Big the World Had to Sit Up and Take Notice
The Criterion Collection know what they’re doing releasing Funny Girl to Blu-ray in December. As the chill winds buffet outside and the rain lashes against the window, what better time is there to snuggle up with a film so warming and lengthy that it has an intermission? Better still, it’s […]
Critters: A Four Course Feast! (1986-1992) – Ample pickings of cinema’s forgotten freaks
A physical media habit can be a bit like gorging yourself on junk food. Whenever a label like Arrow Video offers up a curated bunch of greasy, low-brow, nostalgic pleasures, it’s tough not to water at the mouth like a gibbering animal with the mere thought of adding a franchise […]
The Hop-Pickers (1964): When Prague Summer Turned to Spring
Last week, Second Run continued on their mission to rediscover seemingly forgotten cinematic gems from late twentieth century Eastern Europe and present them to our modern day Western eyes with the release of The Hop-Pickers (known as Starci na chmelu in its Czechoslovakia), a film that has been labelled the […]
Juggernaut (1974): Possibly the Most Accurate Film of Life in 70s Britain
To mark it’s fiftieth anniversary, Eureka Entertainment released Richard Lester’s 1974 movie Juggernaut (aka Terror on the Britannic) for the first time on Blu-ray last week. Featuring a stacked cast headed by Richard Harris and Omar Sharif, with David Hemmings, Anthony Hopkins, Shirley Knight, Ian Holm and Roy Kinnear in […]
Elvira Mistress of the Dark (1988) Campy, Super Sarky Supernatural Laughs
Picture it, Halloween night, 1993 and 13-year-old me is too terrified to watch A Nightmare on Elm Street which my friend’s parents have rented on video (look it up, kids) for the annual Halloween party. So, suffering from major humiliation, I was thrust alone into an upstairs bedroom with the […]
Things Will Be Different (2024): Small-Scale Thriller with Big Ideas
Low-fi indie sci-fi is a surprisingly fertile sub-genre, something that can be traced back to classics like The Twilight Zone that lacked the budget for epic effects but used their limitations to explore big concepts. It’s a great place to showcase great film-makers who go on to bigger budgets, such […]
Watership Down (1978) The Crown Prince of Kindertrauma
Since its original release in 1978, several generations, especially in the United Kingdom, Watership Down has been synonymous with trauma. Following subsequent television broadcasts, Martin Rosen’s adaptation of Richard Adams’ novel has secured its place in animated film history, not least because of the controversy provoked by its brutal violence […]
Days & Afternoon (2015 & 2020) Two Films by Tsai Ming-Liang
I only watched Goodbye Dragon Inn for the first time in 2022. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. I wasn’t new to slower cinema, but I was new to Tsai Ming-liang, who seemed to have cast a spell on me — I was transfixed by his images and blown […]