Martin P. Lumbridge (not his real name) persists in writing about film even though he has no professional qualifications or compelling reason to be believed. Expect spoilers.
Hail Caesar! / High Rise
by Martin | May 1, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
One of the funnier scenes in the Coen Brothers' 50's Hollywood-set latest has Ralph Fiennes as a fussy English director struggling to incorporate studio-imposed Western star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) into his drawing room comedy Merrily We Dance. Before his utter...
Stray Dogs
by Martin | June 13, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
‘What is this life if, filled with care/We have no time to stand and stare?’, said the Victorian poet W. H. Davies. Good point, and a view clearly shared by Chinese director Tsai-Ming-liang, who transfixes (hopefully) his audience with fixed shots of his characters...
Nosferatu / Babygirl / Companion
by Martin | April 27, 2025 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
NOSFERATU 'Yes we have Nosferatu, we have Nosferatu today.' Not much chance of this (the best joke in Mel Brooks' 1995 spoof Dracula: Dead and Loving It) making it into Robert Eggers' latest spin on F. W. Murnau's 1922 film, an unauthorised version of Dracula also...
Arrival
by Martin | March 18, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Denis Villeneuve's Arrival brings to our attention something about contact with alien life forms that to my knowledge hasn't been thoroughly explored up until now – how boring it might be. That's not to say that the film itself is boring – although it does hover on...
Theatre Of Blood (1973)
by Martin | June 29, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Mark Kermode once stated that anyone who said they'd guessed the ending of The Usual Suspects was lying. I have never quite forgiven him for this - I guessed it, but what proof do I have? Essentially he was out there calling me a liar and I had no redress. However, I...
The Witch
by Martin | April 9, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
I saw this at the Odeon Covent Garden. Amazingly, they are only charging £6.00 a ticket at the moment for any showing Monday to Thursday. I hope this doesn't get out, or my chances of getting an entire screen to myself (that ever-elusive dream) will diminish even...
LFF 2019: Queen Of Diamonds (1991) / Krabi 2562
by Martin | January 26, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
QUEEN OF DIAMONDS (1991) Showing in the 'Treasures From The Archive' section at the LFF, Nina Menkes’ Queen of Diamonds features her sister Tinka playing a character who, in the director’s words, ‘hasn’t learned to say hello’. In keeping with her air of diffidence,...
The Devil’s Rain (1975)
by Martin | April 26, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
I've taken to listening to Shaun Keaveny on BBC6 Music in the mornings, via my TV – specifically Freeview 707. A couple of months ago my just-awoken fingers were fumblingly pressing those figures out on the remote and hesitated too long, inadvertently accessing 70, at...
So This Is Real Life – Three Documentaries
by Martin | January 8, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
FURTHER BEYOND This is a film about the making of a biopic about Ambrosio O'Higgins, who – back in the 18th century - travelled from Ireland to Spain to Chile, where he became quite a big deal and his son Bernardo even more of one. In a Tristram Shandy kind of fashion...
The Entity (1982) / Night Watch (1973)
by Martin | June 29, 2025 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE ENTITY It has always struck me that the general tone of life in America is one of hysteria. When I said this once to my cousin, who lives in Texas, she maintained that, rather than hysterics, Americans are 'survivors'. If someone claims to be a survivor merely on...