Blu-Ray Review: Giallo Essentials – Black Edition
The often maligned and overlooked sub-genre of giallo is experiencing something of a renaissance, with a whole new generation beginning to appreciate these stylish and bloody soap operas. With plenty of lurid death scenes and ample nudity, it’s easy to see why it might catch the eye. However, as many films are quite difficult to …
Fantasia Review: Incredible but True
Let’s be honest, there are very few of us who don’t have a midlife crisis in one way or another. For most people it might entail buying a completely new wardrobe or a sudden interest in grime music, but others take it to the nth degree. Almost having the equivalent of a nervous breakdown, leaving …
Blu-Ray Review: Running Out of Time 1 & 2
The character actor is the unheralded star of the cinematic universe. Those familiar faces which regularly pop up randomly in a film and make everything better. Suet Lam fits squarely into this category. In a career spanning over two hundred films, so far, he’s worked regularly with the likes of Stephen Chow and Johnnie To. …
Blu-Ray Review: Get Carter
Michael Caine was undoubtedly one of the most famous British faces of the 1960s and 1970s. Sporting his iconic ‘NHS specs’, a swagger and a cheeky grin, he starred in a number of films which in many ways epitomised the era. It was in his memorable portrayal of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File where …
Film Review: Hyochondriac
It’s a condition which is often played for laughs in popular culture, but hypochondria is no joke. Regularly stigmatised as a ‘made-up illness’, this type of health anxiety is in fact very real. In essence, it describes the phenomenon where someone spends a significant amount of time worrying that they’re ill or will become it. …
Film Review: Hit the Road
It’s astonishing, in many ways, that Iranian filmmakers can still keep making top-tier cinema. With all the restrictions and censorship in place in the country, it’s a miracle that any films get made at all. Directors have to navigate a minefield of rules and regulations, which seem to be in perpetual flux. The worrying recent …
Film Review: Winter’s Yearning
Greenland (or Kalaallit Nunaat as it’s officially known) is the world’s largest island. The bulk of the land is uninhabitable, sparsely populated and with most of the 50,000 population clinging to the south western reaches of the country. It was part of the Kingdom of Denmark for almost three hundred years before being granted home …
Blu-Ray Review: Summertime
Today, David Lean is best remembered for classics such as Laurence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Brief Encounter and Doctor Zhivago. However, he made almost twenty films in an illustrious career spanning five decades. While some have become a little lost in time that doesn’t mean to say they aren’t any good. …
Blu-ray Review: The Witch
The idea of a witch, or similar, has been present in folklore from around the world for hundreds and even thousands of years. While the familiar figure of the old crone wearing a tall pointy hate and riding a broomstick can probably be traced back to medieval and early modern Europe, it’s derived from multiple …
Film Review – Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time
Most biographical documentaries approach their subject in a fairly standard and linear way. Normally, running through their life and work in chronological order, with friends, family and experts on hand to add some insight and move proceedings along. Especially when the focal point is no longer with us. Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time comes at …