DVD/Blu-Ray Review
Blu-Ray Review: My Name is Julia Ross
For almost two decades, between the beginning of the 1940s and the end of the 1950s, film noir played an integral role in Hollywood’s output. It was a genre which contained a raft of familiar tropes, most notably the femme fatale and the hardened gumshoe. It wasn’t always strong on originality; one success could rapidly …
Blu-Ray Review: World on a Wire
The simulation hypothesis proposes that you and I are living inside a simulation. In fact, we all are; wherever you may live in the world. This is an artificial world, most likely computer generated, run by beings with much higher intelligence than us. It is a theory which has helped fashion countless science fiction books, …
Blu-Ray Review: The Boys in the Band
When you mention the name William Friedkin the most likely reaction you’ll receive is a comment about The Exorcist. Whilst the American director is most famous for the seminal 1973 horror, he has a rich and varied career behind him. The French Connection is almost as equally well-known but the likes of Sorcerer, To Live …
Blu-Ray Review: Climax
There are few, if any, living directors who take as much pleasure in pushing boundaries and traumatising cinema-goers as Gaspar Noé. The Argentine has made a career out of terrorising his audiences, both visually and aurally. When he releases a new film, it’s guaranteed to be an experience; whether you like it or not. That …
Blu-Ray Review: Human Desire
Gloria Grahame was not your usual Hollywood star. Despite being obsessed by her looks later on in her career (to a worrying degree) her contract was sold by MGM to RKO because she ‘hadn’t what it takes’ to be successful. She had four husbands, one was the son of another (who she was caught in …
DVD Review: Tides
There are still over one hundred functioning canals in England covering over two thousand miles of navigable waterways. In their heyday they played an integral role in Britain’s industrial revolution, transporting good across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. Today, they still play an important commercial role but are increasingly becoming a way …
DVD Review: VS.
Being a middle-aged white liberal, I rely heavily on the broadsheets to tell me about what the young people are up to. Millennials, it turns out, are work-shy, stupid and drug-addled wasters who don’t even have the decency to drink anymore. Or at least that seems to be the impression of the privileged. Young working-class …
Blu-ray Review: Rosa Luxemburg
There’s a good chance that you’ve never heard the name Margarethe von Trotta before. Despite being a leading light of the German New Wave, the Berliner has been over-shadowed by the likes of Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog. She’s still making films, but history has done her a disservice and her earlier …
Blu-Ray Review: Blindspotting
It seems almost unbelievable in this day and age that race relations in America have regressed towards the levels they were during the Civil Rights movement. Some of the gains Martin Luther King et al made have gradually been eroded under the current regime. Most worryingly, the spectre of white nationalism is on the rise, …
Blu-Ray Review: The Possessed
Alleghe is a popular tourist destination which attracts visitors all year round to enjoy its narrow lanes, beautiful mountains and tranquil lake. Between 1933 and 1946 a chain of four murders shattered the tranquillity of the village in north-eastern Italy. It struck a chord, resonating across the country. Luigi Bazzoni, along with co-director Franco Rossellini, …