Film and TV

Blu-ray: The Importance of Being Ernest (1952) The film opens and closes with a brief ‘reminder’ that we are in a theatre watching a production of the play – and not a film. Based on Oscar Wilde’s final play (the initial production in the late 1800’s of which was infamously sabotaged by allegations of Wilde’s […]

Blu-Ray: Sweet Bean (2015) Sentaro (Masatoshi Nagase) is a middle aged man trying to make ends meet by working in a struggling pancake shop. He is beholden to work there by the spiteful owner due to owing a debt for a mistake he made when he was younger. Everyday he goes through the motions, making […]

Blu-ray: Dead End Drive-In (1986) Imagine this; you’re at a drive-in that plays a variety of exploitation movies on loop. While the movies aren’t playing you have access to a diner serving burgers/fries, etc which you don’t have to pay for, and should you wish to partake there are also drugs available to you. How’s it sounding so […]

DVD: Go Now (1995) Builder and amateur footballer Nick (Robert Carlyle) meets and falls for Hotel worker Karen (Juliet Aubrey), will Nick’s unexplained and sudden Illness ruin their love? Written by Jimmy McGovern and MS sufferer Paul Henry Powell, Go Now was originally broadcast as part of a ‘Love Bites’ TV series on the BBC 20 years […]

DVD: The Water Margin (1973) It’s been quite hard to find any information online about this TV show, so please forgive me for using Wikipdia to give you some background info on it. Made in 1973, The Water Margin is a Japanese television series based on Water Margin, one of the Four Great Classical Novels […]

Blu-ray: Conversation Piece (1974) A retired American professor (Burt Lancaster) lives a solitary and luxurious life in a house in Rome. His world takes an unexpected turn when he is forced to rent part of his house to a countess and her companions: a lover, a daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend. Forced into interaction with the […]

Blu-ray: Hangmen Also Die! (1943) Hangmen Also Die! is set in wartime Czechoslovakia, where surgeon Franticek Svoboda is pursued by the Nazi police and is assisted in evading them by Mascha Novotny. News spreads that the Nazis’ head executioner, known as the Reichsprotector (the Hangman) has been assassinated. Is the doctor the killer? With Fritz Lang […]

Blu-ray: All Night Long (1962) There is something magical about watching black and white movies. Maybe it’s because I don’t watch them very often so it’s a novelty, or it could be that there is something genuinely wonderful and classy about that era of cinema. The Artist from 2011 was a reminder of just how glorious movies […]

Blu-ray: The Bloodstained Butterfly (1971) My introduction into the genre of Giallo began (like many other people) in the 1980’s and the movies of Dario Argento on VHS. The lurid colours, assured direction and twisting storylines had me hooked to such classics as Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno, Tenebre and many more by a plethora of other directors […]

Blu-ray: Matinee (1993) Set against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis, Matinee tells the story of Gene Loomis (Simon Fenton), a boy whose obsession with sci-fi and horror movies masks his loneliness at always being ‘the new boy in town’ as his Fathers Navy career moves them from military base to military base around the country. […]