Reviews

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. […]

Blu-ray: Review: Buster Keaton – The Complete Short Films 1917-1923 Unfortunately for me, it’s very difficult to write a review of this really wonderful boxset without it turning into a ‘History of Cinema’ lesson. Mainly because (in my opinion) you can’t compare these films to contemporary films, despite them being ‘movies’ they come from a different […]

Blu-ray: The Commitments (1991) In Dublin, Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) is sick of failing to sell knocked off gear and wants a better life, so decides to form a soul band with his friends Outspan (Glen Hansard) and Derek (Ken McCluskey). He holds auditions in his parents house and manages to assemble a rag-tag band […]