Everyone who’s ever watched a classic film decades after its release will have had the same experience: you watch it, but you don’t just watch the film, you realise where a thousand other films, TV shows, songs and more got their inspiration from. That strange quality of deja vu is […]
Reviews
Boys from County Hell (2020) Deliriously Dark Irish Comedy Horror (Review)
First made as a 17-minute short in 2013, Boys from County Hell continues the tear that Irish horror has been on in recent years. The emerald isle has been punching way above its weight, delivering some of the most compelling new low-budget horror movies made anywhere in world cinema. While […]
Bringing Up Baby (1938) I Can’t Give You Anything But Love (Review)
Released to Blu-ray on the Criterion label this week is Bringing Up Baby, the 1938 romantic farce starring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn that is still today fondly regarded as one of the best and most pivotal examples of the screwball comedy genre. It tells the story of Dr David […]
Beauty and the Beast (1978) A Grim Fairytale (Review)
The film opens in a mist-shrouded, decaying forest. A band of grimy-looking travellers on horseback, pulling covered wagons are traversing this ominous terrain, accompanied only by the forbidding sounds of the wild. One in their number, a female, anxiously announces that danger will befall them if they continue – but […]
Daimajin Trilogy (1966) A forgotten kaiju trilogy with a unique shintoist spin (Review)
There are two telling facts that need establishing first and foremost when discussing Arrow Video’s new release of the Daimajin trilogy. The studio landscape for the monster movie was divided between Toho and Daiei. Toho had the spoils with Godzilla and Mothra, whereas Daiei had Gamera and the Daimajin. Secondly, […]
Pariah (2011): the most influential 2010s film you haven’t seen (Review)
You don’t get anything if you don’t ask. This new Criterion UK Blu-Ray of Dee Rees’s debut film Pariah came from a request she made when the company met with her about a forthcoming release of her later film Mudbound. Rees suggested that Pariah would make more sense as part […]
The Babadook (2014): the reigning champ of modern horror gets the reissue it deserves (Review)
Is seven years too early to call something a classic? Second Sight are hoping it isn’t, with this hulking 4K remaster of Jennifer Kent’s 2014 feature debut The Babadook clocking in with the weight of extras they’ve previously given to canonical works like Walkabout and The Colour of Pomegranates. The […]
True Romance (1993) Tarantino and Tony Scott’s Glossy Roller Coaster (Review)
Newly restored to 4K by Arrow, Tony Scott and Quentin Tarantino’s True Romance has been released as a limited-edition Arrow Video Blu Ray. It’s a tale as old as time. Boy meets Girl. They hit it off. The girl reveals she’s a call girl hired for Boy’s birthday but has fallen […]
Adoption (1975) A Personal Film from an Unsung Female Director (Review)
Released to Blu-ray by Second Run this week is Adoption, or Örökbefogadás to give it its native Hungarian title. A 1975 film from director Márta Mészáros, it tells the story of Kata (Katelin Berek), a forty-three-year-old factory worker embroiled in a longing-standing love affair with a married man, Jóska (László […]
Straight Shooting (1917) and Hell Bent (1918): John Ford quietly establishes the Western’s essentials (review)
The history of silent cinema is famously patchy, and it’s not surprising when you look at how these films were churned out. Straight Shooting, the first film in Eureka Masters of Cinema’s double-bill of silent-era John Ford films, is the earliest surviving film from the future director of The Searchers. […]