Review: Threads
DVD: Threads (1984) I remember when Threads was originally broadcast here in the UK in 1984. For weeks afterwards it was the main topic of conversation at work: would you prefer to be incinerated in the initial blast or survive? Would making a survival shelter out of your doors actually do anything practical? Would humanity […]
Review: The Parkinsons – A Long Way To Nowhere
DVD: The Parkinsons – A Long Way To Nowhere (2016) A documentary about a band I’d never heard of, who play a genre of music that I dislike. From that opening sentence alone, you may already have an idea of what my opinion will be of The Parkinsons: A Long Way To Nowhere. However, much […]
Review: Jungle
Blu-ray & DVD: Jungle (2017) In the early 1980s, an Israeli adventurer named Yossi Ghinsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) travels to Paz in Bolivia as a sort of rebellion against his strict dad (told in flashback). There, he meets Marcus Stamm (Joel Jackson), a Swiss school teacher, and Marcus’s friend Kevin Gale (Alex Russell), another traveler and […]
Review: Lucky
DVD: Lucky (2017) Knowing that Lucky was released just after Harry Dean Stanton’s death makes it all the more poignant. Seeing his hang-dawg face and big puppy eyes, this couldn’t be a more fitting farewell. Unsympathetic, yet mystical, Lucky does a jerky old man walk through life, repeat and fade, scared of death, and coming […]
Review: Walk With Me
DVD: Walk With Me (2017) Otherwise known as ‘Shhhhh, be quiet and still’. Opening with new members of the… sect? community? Having their heads shaved you can immediately see that these people are extremely happy to be losing their hair as the massive smiles and look of … peacefulness, is palpable. It’s quite nice to […]
Review: Run Chrissie Run!
DVD: Run Chrissie Run! (1984) I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting a low budget ozploitation movie to begin in London, but the opening sequence filmed there sets up the narrative that will follow. IRA member Michael Riley (Michael Aikens) reneges on killing a man and ends up shooting a fellow IRA member instead, […]
Review: Score – A Film Music Documentary
DVD & VOD: Score – A Film Music Documentary (2016) Music is well known for affecting your emotions, and none more so than in film scores where it accompanies and enhances the visual action playing out before you. The themes from Rocky, Superman, and the The Good, The Bad and The Ugly are all ingrained […]
Review: The Passenger
Blu-ray: The Passenger (1975) While containing more dialogue than many of director Michelangelo Antonioni’s previous movies, The Passenger still focuses the majority of its narrative on the visual rather than the auditory. The camera follows the character of Locke (Jack Nicholson) like a ghostly apparition, committing his every move onto celluloid in what at times seem […]
Review: Aces High
DVD: Aces High (1976) Being a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during WWI was a job for life…a life that would likely end within a day or two due to the high fatality rate of the brave men who stepped into the cockpit of those early flying machines. Based on the book Journeys End […]
Review: Town on Trial
Blu-ray: Town on Trial (1957) When a flirty Marylin Monroe-esque member of the local tennis club is murdered, Superintendent Mike Halloran (John Mills) is assigned the task of finding out who the murderer is. His investigations uncover a web of deceit, whereby numerous people are linked to the deceased due to romantic flirtations. The case […]