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.
Crazy About Love: Fingernails, Vincent Must Die, and Tchaikovsky’s Wife
by Martin | March 3, 2024 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
FINGERNAILS Love is lighter than air, sings Stephen Merritt of The Magnetic Fields. It floats away when you let go. Love therefore needs to be grounded: in Greek director Christos Nikou's follow-up to his debut film Apples it is grounded in having your fingernails...
The Substance / The Driver’s Seat (1974)
by Martin | November 10, 2024 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE SUBSTANCE Coralie Fargeat's The Substance is preposterous, which makes perfect sense. We're in the realm of showbiz, after all. Demi Moore is formidable as 'Elizabeth Sparkle', a fading star now fronting an aerobics show who is told by leering, vulgar producer...
In Pictures 2: Rope (1948) /Possessor (2020)
by Martin | August 30, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
ROPE On the extras on my DVD of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope screenwriter Arthur Laurents nails several of the reasons why this adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's play (based on the Leopold/Loeb case in which a couple of students felt entitled to kill a 14 year old boy...
La Grande Bouffe (1973)
by Martin | August 15, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Marco Ferreri’s 1973 film La Grande Bouffe has airline pilot Marcello Mastroianni, chef Ugo Tognazzi, TV director Michel Piccoli and judge Philippe Noiret gathering in Noiret’s old family pile to indulge themselves in hedonistic pleasures until the toilet backs up -...
BFI London Film Festival 2014: Hard To Be A God
by Martin | October 25, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
What better way to ease yourself gently into a film festival than with a nearly-three-hour black and white Russian film based on an sf novel I've never read? Aleksei German's film (based on a novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky) is set on a planet which has been...
The Angry Red Planet (1960)
by Martin | January 26, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
There's often a sense in SF films, especially those of the 50's, that the real subjects of interest are not giant mantises or bug-eyed aliens but women. This is made explicit in director Robert Gordon's 1955 film It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955) where Faith...
Caged Women: Hounds of Love, Berlin Syndrome, The Beguiled
by Martin | September 16, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
HOUNDS OF LOVE In 1987 sullen Australian teenager Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings) seethes with resentment at her mum, who has chosen to split with surgeon dad, necessitating a move to a seedier part of town – still, things could be worse, as she soon discovers when...
Final Destination: Bloodlines / Bogancloch / The Shrouds
by Martin | September 27, 2025 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES Horror franchises are noted for their unkillable villains, constantly being resurrected, but the Final Destination films cut to the chase in that the villain is death itself, and who is going to kill him? Or her. Or them. The films settle...
Bad Luck Banging, Or Loony Porn
by Martin | February 13, 2022 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Ah, masks! Still de rigeur at the ICA at this point (this was before Plan B kicked in). During the London Film Festival I dared to go in there unmasked, which felt like a transgressive act, but hey, it was a festival and anyway isn't the ICA supposed to welcome...
The Lady From Shanghai (1947) and The Spooky Bunch (1980)
by Martin | August 25, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Orson Welles' Irish accent in The Lady From Shanghai is perfectly emblematic of the film itself: you can't quite believe it yet you can't quite disbelieve it either. Welles' character, a sailor called Michael O'Hara, falls in love with Rita Hayworth's lady of the...