Film and TV

DVD & Digital: Upright (2019 – )Despite beginning in 2019, I’d never watched any episodes of Upright, so of course the new Series 1 & 2 DVD box set is a great way to catch up on everything (or revisit if you’re already familiar with it).Starring Tim Minchin and Milly Alcock as Lucky and Meg, […]

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’; […]

DVD: Children’s Film Foundation (CFF) Bumper Box Vol 4.The Dog and the Diamonds (1953)The Stolen Airliner (1955)Blow Your Own Trumpet! (1958)The Missing Note (1961)The Big Catch (1968)Blinker’s Spy-Spotter (1972)The Flying Sorceror (1974)Mr Selkie (1978)Gabrielle and the Doodleman (1984)Born in the 60’s and growing up in the 70’s, the Children’s Film Foundation were a staple part of […]

Blu-ray & Digital: Cursed Films – Series OneWhile I was familiar with numerous stories of films having different things mysteriously go wrong during various stages of production, Cursed Films did the thing I love from all good documentaries and made me exclaim “well I never knew THAT!”…something this 5 part series elicited from me on […]

Blu-ray: They Might Be Giants (1971)Wealthy and widowed former respected Judge Justin Playfair (George C. Scott) is convinced that he is in fact Sherlock Holmes, dressing like him and convinced that he has to find his arch-enemy Professor Moriarty.Justins brother Blevins (Lester Rawlins), more out of concern for inheriting the family fortune rather than the […]

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: Scary Movie (1991)101 Films have released yet another great AGFA title, fuelling my obsession for low budget indie films.Their latest title is 1991’s Scary Movie, starring an early performance from Academy Award nominee John Hawkes as wimpy nerd Warren.After awakening from a particularly scary nightmare, Warren’s premonition appears to be coming true, as an […]

Blu-ray: Enter Santo – The First Adventures of the Silver-Masked Man.SANTO VS. EVIL BRAIN (961)SANTO VS. INFERNAL MEN (1961)Not being familiar with El Santo (a real life Mexican luchador whose real name is Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta and who as well as wrestling starred in over 50 movies and was a Mexican folk hero), I was […]

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. […]