DVD Review: The Resident
The arrival of your first child is a scary time for both parents. However, having a living miniature human growing inside you for 9 months is liable to leave you both physically and mentally changed. The anxiety about the responsibility can be almost crippling. Combined with the loneliness of being cooped up in the house …
Blu-Ray Review: Cops Vs Thugs
Kinji Fukasaku may not be an instantly familiar name to most people but I can guarantee that you’ve at least heard of one of his films. Battle Royale, his penultimate film, is one of the most iconic and thrilling cinematic experiences of the 21st century. In an illustrious career, he’s made over sixty films. His …
Incoming: Inversion
Niloofar, 35 years old, lives alone in Tehran with her aged mother, and stays busy with her tailoring shop. Tehran’s air pollution has reached maximum levels because of thermal inversion (when warm air settles over cool air, preventing pollutants escaping) making it hard to breath. When doctors insist that her mother must leave smoggy Tehran …
Blu-Ray Review: Madame de….
Nothing has captivated audiences from the advent of ‘talkies’ quite like great romantic drama. Whether it’s Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Dr Zhivago or Brief Encounter, there’s something exhilarated in being swept-up in the moment. Director Max Ophüls was a fan of romance too (as many of his actresses would attest). He made several films …
Blu-Ray Review: Wolf Guy
My first introduction to the work of Sonny Chiba came from an unlikely source. It was when Clarence (Christian Slater) takes Alabama (Patricia Arquette) to a late-night Sonny Chiba triple-bill of The Streetfighter, Return of the Streetfighter and Sister Streetfighter in Tony Scott’s True Romance. Sony Chiba was one of the first actors to become …
Blu-ray Review: Mulholland Drive
With all the excitement around season 3 of Twin Peaks, along with the recent statement from David Lynch that he will not be making any more films, there’s no better time to re-watch Mulholland Drive. Interestingly, when Mulholland Drive was originally released, the opposite was the case. A frustrated director jumping ship from TV to …
Incoming: La Strada
Looking for an assistant, the brutish circus strong man Zampano (Anthony Quinn), buys the innocent and slow-witted Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) from her impoverished mother and the pair take to the road with a travelling circus. Life with Zampano is violent and unpredictable and when Gelsomina falls in love with a high-wire artist, The Fool (Richard …
Blu-Ray Review: FILM NOTFILM
Samuel Beckett is without doubt one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Renowned for his bleak outlook on human existence, his greatest legacy is Waiting for Godot. A champion of the absurd, the Nobel Prize winner left his mark on both the English and French languages. However, Beckett only ventured into filmmaking …
Film Review: Machines
In the digital age with so many distractions, it’s unusual just to stop and observe. Our attention spans are increasingly under assault and modern filmmaking inexorably reflects this. However, documentary filmmaking is an area which can offer a refreshing alternative. The most famous modern example is the ‘Qatsi’ trilogy, but Mauro Herce’s 2015 film Dead …
Film Review: Spaceship
The teenage years are difficult time for adolescents trying to come with hormonal and physical changes. In the current age of Snapchat, social media and YouTube, it’s arguably never been harder. The urge to be different is often suppressed by the pressure to conform. In Alex Taylor’s debut feature Spaceship he takes all these youthful …