Blu-ray: The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933)Adapted from the 1932 play by Ladislas Fodor and directed by James Whale, you can tell right from the start that The Kiss Before the Mirror is pre-Hayes code, as we see Lucy Bernsdorf skip through the garden of her lover (a very young Walter Pidgeon) before being led into the bedroom […]
Blu-ray: State of the Union (1948)I’ve never been a huge Spencer Tracy fan. To me he always seems to play himself; a somewhat grumpy American middle aged male, and more or less overshadowed here by the talent of his ‘girlfriend’ Katherine Hepburn. Unfortunately I feel the same about his performance in Frank Capra’s State of […]
The Teskey Brothers: A few years back, Steve Woolley, my mate and partner in music, sent me a video of the Teskey Brothers performing Pain and Misery. I felt as though my heart would burst.I think for an instant I blacked out at the sound of Josh Teskey’s voice, so filled with soul, pleading with me […]
DVD: The Borrowers (1997)Based on Mary Norton’s 1950’s novels of The Borrowers (basically just the size of the characters and the character’s name remains), but fear not reader, for this Hollywood make over is a delight to watch and very much one of those ‘family’ films of the 90’s.Moved from its original British setting to […]
Blu-ray: Bluebeard’s Eight Wife (1938)Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife is one of those 1930’s Hollywood screwball comedies that ping and zing with dialogue that can still make you chuckle 90 years later. On the French Riviera, Grumpy and wealthy businessman Michael Brandon (Gary Cooper, who is rather miscast in this role) wants to buy JUST a pajama top, as […]
4K UHD Blu-ray: The Sisters Brothers (2018)Based on the book by Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers kind of passed 60MW by on its 2018 release, amazing considering we are huge western fans. Ah, but I must correct myself dear reader. The Sister’s Brother’s may sound like a western, it may look like a western, but […]
Blu-ray: Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) Director Todd Solondz has this knack of making the most unattractive and morally corrupt characters…sympathetic. He’s also one of the best American, sort of ‘unknown’, filmmakers around, mainly because he’s so …. different, showing empathy for the underbelly of America. Welcome to the Dollhouse follows the Weiner family, mainly […]
Blu-ray, DVD & Digital: Living (2022) Any script by Kazuo Ishiguro is certain to be special, and ‘Living,’ adapted from the 1952 Japanese film Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa), is quite…. beautiful in that utterly British, restrained way that Ishiguro excels in. Set in a post war, 1953 London, it tells the story of a sad, grey man, a ‘gentleman’; […]
Blu-ray: The Night of the Following Day (1969) Based on the novel The Snatchers by Lionel White, The Night of the Following Day was originally slated for Stanley Kubrick, but the director dropped the project due to rules about depicting kidnapping on screen in the early sixties. By 1969 these rules had gone and director Hubert Cornfield began […]
Blu-ray: Death of a Gunfighter (1969)After a year of work, director Robert Totten (whose experience was in television directing Rawhide, Bonanza and Gunsmoke) left Death of a Gunfighter after ‘creative differences’ with star Richard Widmark. Widmark, whose previous film was Madigan, pulled in that films director – the great Don Siegel to take the reins. […]
