Blu-Ray: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) Nevada, 1885: Two drifters; Gil Carter (Henry Fonda) and Art Croft (Harry Morgan, credited as Henry Morgan), ride into the town of Bridger Wells and discover that a local rancher has been killed and his cattle stolen by a gang of rustlers. The townspeople are up in arms over the death […]
Blu-ray: Absolute Beginners (1986) 1958 Britain; teenage photographer Colin (Eddie O’Connell) falls in love with aspiring fashion designer Crepe Suzette (Patsy Kensit) but she’s only interested in her career. Boy loses girl to rich (possibly gay) man (James Fox), race riots and full blown Hollywood dancing ensue. In 1986 the last film 21 year old […]
Blu-ray: Three Amigos (1986) Three silent movie stars mistakenly end up in Mexico on a mission to save a peasant village; chaos and singing ensue. I’ve always had a bit of thing about Steve Martin (Lucky Day), his sort of humour along with Mel Brooks is that PeeWee-esque type of surreal childish vulgarity that makes […]
DVD: Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me (2014) As a child my parents’ choice of music was nothing short of eclectic. While Mam would whoop it up to Rod Stewart (yes she did think he was sexy), my dad would be humming along to his favourite LP of Cossack Choirs singing songs from the homeland. So […]
DVD: Line of Duty (Series 3) (2016) In an age of Netflix and serial binge watching of TV shows, waiting week on week for the next episode of BBC 2’s ‘Line of Duty’ has been tortuous. With character arcs as wide as Breaking Bad and a story that goes as deep as Vicky McClure’s DC […]
Blu-ray: 1900 (Novecento) (1976) Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (Novecento) is a sprawling 317 minute movie that covers seventy years of Italian social and political history, from 1901, the year Verdi died and peasants were still in bondage to the landowners, to the 1970’s. Novecento follows the lives of two Italian men born on the same day […]
Blu-ray: Bride of Re-Animator (1989) Eight months after the massacre at Miskatonic, we find Doctors Herbert West and Dan Cain working as medics in the middle of a civil war in Peru. It’s obvious from the start that West is up to his old ‘Re-animating the dead’ tricks again, and it’s not long until they’re […]
Blu-ray: The Ninth Configuration (1980) As a fan of film, on occasion a review copy Blu-ray will plop on my mat, and on opening it I will sigh and think ‘Oh fuck, here we go’. It’s not a resigned sigh or even a horrified exhale, but rather a ‘how can I possibly write a critical piece about […]
Blu-ray: The Life of Rock with Brian Pern (2014-) I will always be eternally grateful to Brian Pern for discovering Kate Bush. Written by BAFTA nominated and Emmy Award winning director/writer Rhys Thomas and The Fast Show’s Simon Day, ‘The Life of Rock with Brian Pern’ follows the ‘story’ of the eponymous singer/songwriter/Rock God, his band THOTCH and associated muscians, […]
Blu-ray: Three Days of the Condor (1975) The 1970’s, home of the conspiracy thriller (want a list? Here’s a few to jog your memory; The Parallax View, Chinatown, Capricorn One, Klute, The Conversation and Three Days of the Condor, whose reputation precedes it as one of the essential paranoia films of 1970’s. Robert Redford plays […]
