Review: The Train
Blu-ray: The Train (1964) Just as WW2 is about to end, Von Waldheim; (Paul Scofield) a Nazi commander in charge of the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris, begins to stockpile as much art as he can on a train bound for Germany before the allies take Paris back. Can Labiche (Burt Lancaster) and fellow […]
Review: Mad Max: Fury Road
Cinema: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) George Miller takes us back to the wasteland of a dystopian future where life is cheap and the only things that matter are water, petrol and bullets. Not a remake but rather another adventure to add to the other Mad Max movies, and now Miller’s very distinct style comes […]
Review: Coherence
DVD: Coherence (2013) A group of early-thirties, middle class, American friends (Nicolas Brendon, Emily Baldoni) gather for a dinner party as a comet passes overhead. Things quickly begin to go…‘weird’. One of my favourite films for the last few years is the Indie Sci-fi Another Earth, it has a really original feel to it, and […]
Review: Your Cheatin’ Heart
DVD: Your Cheatin’ Heart (1990) Dorwood Crouch is doing time for armed Robbery. His wife Cissie (Tilda Swinton) asks local food writer Frank McClusky (John Gordon Sinclair) to help her clear his name. Cissie believes Fraser Boyle (Ken Stott) a ‘musical’ fish seller has framed him. All this happens with a backdrop of some great […]
Review: The Haunting of Radcliffe House
DVD: The Haunting of Radcliffe House (2014) The Haunting of Radcliffe House (AKA: Altar) is a new ghost story starring Hollywood old boy Matthew Modine and Brit Olivia Williams. Written and directed by British filmmaker Nick Willing who made the excellent Photographing Fairies in 1997. Set in the Yorkshire moors, Modine and Williams play Alec & Meg; a […]
Review: Coffy
Blu-ray: Coffy (1973) Pam Grier; if you can’t picture her then go now and Google her images. Google ‘Foxy Brown’. Now Google ‘Coffy’. I know she’s incredibly gorgeous but make no mistake guys and gals she’s one tough cookie, and in Jack Hill’s 1973 ‘blaxploitation’ classic she paints the screen red in this tale of […]
Review: Day of Anger
Blu-ray: Day of Anger (1967) By 1967 the ‘spaghetti western‘ (a subgenre of the traditional ‘Western’) was enjoying particular success with audiences worldwide. There seemed to be a pool of actors who kept appearing in sweaty close-up after sweaty close-up in every one of them; sometimes sat astride a horse before being shot, and other times […]
Review: Blood and Black Lace
Blu-ray: Blood and Black Lace (1964) ‘Giallo’ means Yellow in Italian. This became the label for Italian detective thrillers as the early paperback thriller novels were adorned with yellow covers…so now you know. Mario Bava is the undoubted Godfather of Giallo. Giving fresh life to the horror genre in a way that was to be […]
Review: Midnight Run
Blu-ray: Midnight Run (1988) Many film fans say that Robert De Niro’s career crashed when he started doing comedy; The ‘Meet the Parents’ films, although financially successful, were to many an abuse of the great actors talents and maybe he shouldn’t DO comedy….well…. many years earlier was a film by Martin Scorsese about a mentally […]
Review: Wolf Hall
Blu-ray: Wolf Hall (2015) Reading that Hilary Mantel’s novels ‘Wolf Hall’ and ‘Bring up the Bodies’ were being turned into a TV programme would fill some fans of the books with trepidation. The fact that it was to be a BBC production was great, but the problem would lie, for me, in who would star […]