Classic Cinema
Blu-Ray Review: The L-Shaped Room
For a few years around the beginning of the 1960s, British new wave cinema burned fast and fierce. Shot in black and white, and with an emphasis on portraying real people, it produced some of the most creative and powerful films of the era. The likes of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life, …
Blu-Ray Review: Howards End
Merchant Ivory Productions started out with the goal of making English-language films in India, aimed at the international market. The majority of their films have been produced by Ismail Merchant and directed by James Ivory; at one point almost becoming their own genre. They’re still going to this day, with James Ivory writing the script …
Blu-Ray Review: Montparnasse 19
The portrait of a tortured artist is one which has inspired fascination and sometimes imitation for hundreds of years. Alcoholism and drug addiction can become romantic notions when they’re associated with the likes of Hemingway, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Coleridge or Dickens. Indeed, these kinds of excesses have become synonymous with those who are considered creative …
Blu-Ray Review: Four Film Noir Classics
Between the beginning of the 1940s and end of the 1950s, the most exciting genre in American cinema was undoubtedly film noir. With its mix of stylistic black and white (often experimental) visuals, hard-nosed protagonists and femme fatales, it still remains influential on modern cinema. The likes of D.O.A., The Big Heat, Double Indemnity, In …
Blu-Ray Review: Hammer Volume One: Fear Warning
Hammer Volume One: Fear Warning brings together four Hammer horror productions released in the first half of the 1960s. They are four very different tales of fear, curses, madness and the supernatural. In a genre and period when female actors were usually restricted to playing the victim or the damsel in distress, these films afforded …
Blu-Ray Review: Torture Garden
Two of the greatest authors of terror, H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, revelled in the medium of short stories. The format lends itself to the horror genre, allowing directors to investigate a full gamut of fear. Anthology films are inherently difficult as, unlike collections of short stories, by their very nature there’s a much …
Blu-Ray Review: Le Plaisir
Some celluloid experiences are just pure pleasure. Aptly named, Le Plaisir is one such film. Based on a triptych of tales by Guy de Maupassant, Max Ophuls brings the bewildering decadence of late 19th century France to life on the screen. His camera roams around luxurious ballrooms, high class brothels and artist studios, dazzling and …
Blu-Ray Review – George A. Romero: Between Night and Dawn
The sad passing of George A. Romero this year took away one of the true legends of genre cinema. With his zombie trilogy of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, he completely changed the landscape of horror film making. Indeed, he single-handedly re-animated the sub-genre of zombies. …
Blu-Ray Review: The Party
When looking back at films you didn’t see first time around, it’s fair to say that some age better than others. A case in point is The Party. A film released in 1968 by Blake Edwards and starring Peter Sellers. Sellers, a legendary comic actor who had lost his way after starting to believe his …
Blu-Ray Review: See No Evil (Indicator Series)
The loss of a sense is an obviously devastating and life changing experience. Whilst the body and mind can gradually adjust, there’s a period where every day becomes a new learning experience. Sigh, is arguably the most important sense. If the lights go out, the world can become a very strange and scary place. In …