Safe Haven Review
Nicholas Sparks adaptations seem to be becoming a genre all of their own, Spark is even credited as producer here, and there is little in Safe Haven that will most likely be of interest to those not already head of heels in love with his particular brand of romantic melodrama. Fans of his now tried … Read more
Oscar Predictions and the Winners as They’re Announced
I’ve never particularly liked the Oscars and I rarely care too much who wins but I’ve always found them oddly compelling. As someone who reads a lot of film sites, magazines and listens to a lot of film podcasts the Oscars are also impossible to avoid and every year the volume of coverage seems to … Read more
Sunday Reads: 24th February 2013
Charlie Sheen Is Winning With Inside the Mind of Charles Swan II Whilst I think the way in which Karina Longworth has her cake and eats it with this piece – dismissing those that have written about Sheen whilst falling into similar traps herself – there is some really fascinating detail in this piece at … Read more
Wreck-It Ralph’s Playful Retelling of Recent American Political and Economic History
Whilst film-makers often deliberately infuse their films with messages relating to current concerns – the allegorical explorations by Romero in his zombie films immediately spring to mind – more subtle or even subconsciousness reflections of recent events often find their way into films. In the following piece I explore the way in which Wreck-It Ralph, … Read more
Jennifer Lynch Interview
The film is fascinating in the questions it raises about nature vs. nurture. Do you find yourself coming down more on one side of that debate and did making Chained change your views at all or lead you in new directions? Such a great question. I think the dangerous part of nurture vs. nature is … Read more
Insect Woman/Nishi Ginza Station Review
Born into the Japanese rural peasant life of 1918, Tome, played by the magnetic Hidari Sachiko, is the daughter of a promiscuous woman and a mentally challenged father, although her father may of course be any number of men. The situation she is born into is ugly and vulgar and so is set the tone of her life. … Read more
Le Silence de la mer Review
Le Silence de la mer is a real treat, both as a standalone experience and also particularly for anyone familiar with and interested in Melville’s body of work. Le Silence de la mer was a film that so easily could have never been seen, with Melville taking a huge gamble in making the film without the consent … Read more
Douglas Trumbull Interview
There’s a lot to Silent Running in the technology, the story and the ecological message. What first got you excited about making the film? When I was initially thinking about doing any film I inadvertently came across Tod Browning’s movie The Freaks and there was an amazing character played by Johnny Eck, who could walk on his hands. That … Read more
Sunday Reads: 3rd February 2013
Stray penises and politicos David Simon takes a look at a recent unseemly journalistic trend. Louise Brooks And Me Anne Billson blogs about ‘The Girl with the Black Helmet’. Ludivine Sagnier: ‘I got frightened and shut down’ An interview with the wonderful French actress on the occasion of the UK release of Love Crime. My Empire of … Read more
Monte Hellman Interview
At the time the casting of Two-Lane Blacktop was somewhat unconvential. Could you talk a little about how you came to choose the particular actors you used, specifically James Taylor and Laurie Bird. Well, I think that James was probably the first one to be cast and I had been intervieweing just about every young actor in … Read more
A Man Vanishes Review
In 1965 Shohei Imamura set out to make a documentary about Tadashi Oshima, a man who had gone missing, dropped out of the lives of everyone he knew, left no word on where he had gone, and simply vanished. What drove him to do this? Could he have actually been murdered? What do his friends … Read more
Bullet to the Head Review
Walter Hill has a lot of good will in the bank for making a number of somewhat flawed but wonderfully enjoyable hard boiled pictures over the past forty years. His films may have done little to raise his status as a director to that of a venerated and individual artist, films such as The Warriors … Read more
Punishment Park Review
Peter Watkins once described Punishment Park as taking place “tomorrow, yesterday or five years from now” and it is a statement that applies as well now as it did when he first said it in 1971. Punishment Park is a faux-documentary that focuses on a number of ‘political prisoners’, who are given the choice between serving out a prison … Read more
Flight Review
Flight opens with an introduction to Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) that sets up the character with exactly the kind of neat and effortless writing that makes Flight such a solid drama. Whip has just woken up in a hotel room, clearly feeling the effects of a heavy night, and he’s not alone. As he answers the phone … Read more
Alex Cox Interview
In the booklet for the Masters of Cinema Blu-ray release of Repo Man you comment that you can write ten to twenty pages in a good day. What sort of writing habit do you have? Do you ever get ‘writer’s block’ and if so how do you cope with it? I haven’t experienced writers block. Not that … Read more
The Ballad of Narayama Review
Winner of the Grand Prix in Cannes in 1983 Imamura’s The Ballad of Narayama, an adaptation of two stories by Shichiro Fukawa, must been quite a shock to an audience unprepared for its dark and often sexual subject matter. The film primarily focuses on the elderly Orin, a 69 year-old woman living in a village … Read more
Zero Dark Thirty – Torture, Revenge and a Question for America
Following an opening featuring a black screen and the sounds of 9/11 calls ,which lasts for a deeply uncomfortable period of time despite actually being relatively short, Zero Dark Thirty moves into more scenes which are well played to upset and discomfort an audience. We are introduced to the lead, Maya (Jessica Chastain), who is … Read more
Touch of Evil Blu-ray Review
Whilst Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane sits atop film polls year after year and holds a prominent (and worthy) place in canonical discussions of film, Touch of Evil often takes a second place to the grandeur of Kane. But for me, Touch of Evil reigns supreme. A crowning achievement from Welles, visual elegance combining beautifully with a hard edged but absorbingly Shakespearean tale, Touch of … Read more
Silent Running Review
With startling special effects and a convincing portrayal of an imagined future it is easy to discuss Silent Running simply within the context of being an accomplished science fiction film, but like the best that science fiction has to offer Silent Running is far deeper than its outward appearance may suggest. That is not to … Read more
The Iron Horse Review
“Accurate and faithful in every particular of fact and atmosphere is this pictorial history of the first transcontinental railroad.” So opens John Ford’s 1924 silent epic The Iron Horse, a tale of the building of the first transcontinental railroad. Not quite as historically accurate as the opening title card may suggest, Ford’s film is a … Read more
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