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. […]
4K UHD Blu-ray: The Last Emperor (1987)The Last Emperor, adapted from Puyi’s 1964 autobiography, is without a doubt one of the last BIG epic films – there’s no CGI here, all the silk gowns, landscapes and extras are real. It was the first film ever to be allowed to be filmed in the real Forbidden […]
Blu-ray: Married to the Mob (1988)Directed by ex-Roger Corman employee Jonathan Demme, 1988’s Married to the Mob stars Michelle Pfeiffer as Angie De Marco; curly, dark haired ‘Noo Yawrk’ wife of Alec Baldwin’s Frank ‘The cucumber’ De Marco. Along with Dean Stockwell as Tony ‘The Tiger’ Russo; the mafia Don and Frank’s boss, Mercedes Ruehl as his […]
BFI Limited Edition 2-disc Blu-ray, iTunes and Amazon Prime: Nil by Mouth (1997)How do you review a film like Nil By Mouth? The actual story, well, there’s not much too it, a few things happen, but this isn’t a ‘story’ as such, it’s more a slice of life, it’s not a peek into, it’s a […]
Blu-ray: Remember the Night (1940)It’s the week before Christmas and Lee Leander (Barbara Stanwyck) gets arrested for blatantly stealing a bracelet from a New York store, she’s assigned to be prosecuted by Jack Sargeant (Fred MacMurray), just as he was about to drive home to his mother for Christmas. He interferes with the trial so […]
Digital: Beautiful Beings (2022) Beautiful Beings (original Icelandic title Berdreymi) begins with 14-year-old Baldur (Balli). He’s odd, smells, has a wonky eye and is mercilessly bullied, beaten and peed on in school. After being beaten senseless in an underpass he appears on TV in a news report about the wild youth of Iceland. Returning to […]
Blu-ray: Ghost Stories For Christmas – Volume 1 (1968-73) We at 60MW Towers are already, being of oldish age and a penchant for the ghostly, fans of the BBC’s Christmas Ghost stories. Every year I place the old DVD box set in front of Mr 60MW, and wearing a long Victorian gown I found in […]
You’re singing to yourself right now, aren’t you?No matter if you loved or hated that song, its firmly ensconced in anyone over 40’s mind.It’s a long time since I’ve seen this film and was surprised at just how much I’d forgotten. Arrow’s new 4K UHD release includes an ‘extended’ 155-minute version of the film which […]
