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Hereditary

Hereditary

In theory it ought to be possible to respond to a film without taking into account to the critical reaction to it, but once you are aware of that reaction and have seen it pasted on the sides of buses, there's not much you can do about that: it's already in you. But...

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A Cat In The Brain (1990) and Slugs (1988)

A Cat In The Brain (1990) and Slugs (1988)

A CAT IN THE BRAIN It may seem an odd thing to say of a film called A Cat In The Brain but - inured as I am to disappointment in such matters (almost counting on it, you might say) - the last thing I expected to see in it was a cat clawing at someone's (living) brain....

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Three Against Nature

Three Against Nature

THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA (1976) 'An insult to any audience' concludes the review of Lewis John Carlino's film The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (hereafter referred to as Sailor) in my damaged-in-transit Waterstones-freebie edition of the...

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More Quite Good Films of 2014

L FOR LEISURE The fact that people are nostalgic for the 90's is beguilingly weird to me - I was there, and barely noticed them – but maybe this is why I enjoyed Whitney Horn and Lev Kalman's goofy, dreamy, possibly inconsequential L For Leisure so very much. It was...

Frightfest 2015 Day One

The Rotten Link Raulo and Roberta (Luis Ziembrowski and Paula Brasca) are two unlikely siblings: a simple-minded hulk, he looks old enough to be her father while she is a pretty young thing barely out of her teens. But they fit into their isolated Argentinian...

Downton Abbey (2019) / Ray and Liz (2018)

DOWNTON ABBEY For many years the TV series Downton Abbey, created by Julian Fellowes, mined the Sunday night craving for reassurance about the past, presenting it as a world in which everyone knew their place. The past, at least the past we never knew personally, is a...

Santo in the Wax Museum (1963) / Santo Vs. The She-Wolves (1976)

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the cinema... it IS safe. Oppressively so. I don't know about you but walking into a room full of people in surgical masks doesn't 'make me feel safe' – it makes me feel uneasy. And so I haven't joined the rush to get...

BFI London Film Festival 2022: Lockdown Lingers

COMA I am increasingly belated. Already it is 2023 and I still haven't got around to dealing with the 2022 London Film Festival. However, in many respects the festival itself hadn't yet escaped the preceding lockdown years – obviously nobody was expected to wear a...

The Angry Red Planet (1960)

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...

The Colossus Of New York (1958) / The Alligator People (1959)

In American monster movies of the early 50's the monstrous generally had a scientific explanation – of course the science didn't always stand up to close examination, but then it rarely got any. It was only required to generate panic - for the length of the film, at...

London Film Festival 2016 – Further Off The Beaten Track

EYES OF MY MOTHER This curious little black-and-white number, from America, has received some acclaim but to these eyes was not quite curious enough. It's the story of Francisca, who at the start of the film is a young girl leading an idyllic existence in a remote...

The Invisible Life

It was a lovely day, sunshine sparkling on the Thames, Green Park bustling with life. The freshness in the air seemed almost to be trying to dissuade me against seeing a bleak existential drama about death at the ICA, but I was determined - even if, in the event, it...

Apples / In The Earth

APPLES Who on earth, returning to the cinema after – well OK, during – a global pandemic would go and see a film that is about the pandemic, even if obliquely? About six people (including me) is the answer, if this afternoon showing is anything to go by. Apples seems...

Some more reviews.

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