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 […]
Studio Canal
Edward and Caroline (1951) A progenitor of the romantic comedy formula (Review)
Joe Orton: Loot (1970) & Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970) (Review)
Touchez Pas au Grisbi (1954) Jean Gabin and Jacques Becker’s Radical Chic (Review)
There’s an anecdote Martin Scorsese often tells about his childhood that turns up in some variant or other in most of his gangster films. It concerns the future director walking around Little Italy with his mother, noticing that some people seemed to be wearing better clothes and driving better cars […]
Mulholland Drive (2001) It’s no wonder David Lynch’s work inspires such devotion (Review)
“Nah, you’re not thinkin’. You’re too busy being a smart-alec to be thinkin’” The Cowboy If you’ve never seen David Lynch’s 2001 Cannes Best Director winner Mulholland Drive, it’s probably worth stopping reading and buying Studio Canal’s new Blu-Ray restoration right now. That’s normally the kind of recommendation critics save […]
The Proud Valley (1940) Paul Robeson shines in this important icon of black cinema (Review)
The Man Between (1953) A tense prototype for the behind enemy lines political thriller (Review)
The Blue Lamp (1950) The movie that birthed the influential Dixon of Dock Green (Review)
The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) A Forgotten Gem of the Wave of British Social Realism (Review)
Pool of London (1951) Blazing a Trail for Black British Cinema (Review)
Studio Canal’s latest presentation of London’s finest cinema exponent, Ealing studios, defied all expectations for what one of their films should be. Basil Dearden’s Pool of London evokes the charm associated with an Ealing film whilst also including a complexity beyond the studio’s typical relationship with criminality. An approach to […]