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.
Death Car On The Freeway (1979)
by Martin | July 18, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
The critical appeal of the recent Mad Max sequel was so across-the-board that it even screened at arthouse venues like the Curzon Soho - while I was in there waiting for Christian Petzold’s (excellent) German drama Phoenix to start, a trailer for it played. The woman...
Frightfest 2014: Bad Milo!
by Martin | September 7, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Frightfest has relocated from the Empire Leicester Square to the Vue Leicester Square, which seems to be a good thing. No more cramped Discovery Screens, we now have the run of numerous larger screens over several floors. And it's even nearer Burger King, where I sit...
Censor / Surge
by Martin | October 10, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
CENSOR Prano Bailey-Bond's Censor makes a link between censorship and (emotional, psychological) repression that's pretty obvious, but the film has a knack of making the obvious work – which has the additional virtue of being thematically appropriate. After all, the...
The Boxer’s Omen (1983) / Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003)
by Martin | May 15, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE BOXER'S OMEN I saw this in late 2016 at the Barbican in a season called Cheap Thrills, a celebration of bad taste. Is this then a 'bad film'? If so, we need to dismiss any judgmental qualities that might still be clinging to the word 'bad'. We are not condemning...
Barbarous Mexico
by Martin | January 9, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Raindance! It’s the London film festival I always forget about, tucked as it is into the gap between Frightfest and the BFI London Film Festival but in 2015 I made it to one lunchtime screening at the Vue Piccadilly. It was busy, chaotic even, in the waiting area...
BFI London Film Festival 2021: Age and Agency
by Martin | January 30, 2022 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
LA ABUELA In this Spanish film from Rec director Paco Plaza, Susana (Almudena Amor), a fashion model on the verge of success, has to take a career break when her grandmother Pilar (Vera Valdez) has a brain haemorrhage and she has to go and look after her, at least...
Longlegs / Only The River Flows
by Martin | October 16, 2024 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
LONGLEGS Longlegs has been subject to a lot of hype claiming that it is the scariest film of the year or decade or maybe even century, and it certainly maintains a tense and creepy atmosphere throughout, but the scariest moment comes before the credits, where the...
Frightfest 2017: Outliers
by Martin | November 5, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
DHOGS I'm a genre lightweight really, a dilettante. Of all the films I saw at Frightfest this year, only one – The Glass Coffin - could really be called a horror film, and that was probably the least of them. Why, I wasn't even wearing a black T-shirt. Dhogs isn't...
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quay De Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
by Martin | April 14, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
CAUTION: Pre-lockdown content. May include allusions to leaving the house. Are there awards for audiences? Sometimes I feel that I deserve recognition for the efforts I make to catch one-off showings of alienating arthouse films – or at least, that they should pay me...
White Bird In A Blizzard
by Martin | April 12, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
This adaptation of Laura Kasischke's young adult novel finds director Gregg Araki in less than full-on mode, and my first impression, such is the uncertainty of tone here, is that when he isn't in full-on mode (eg: Nowhere, Kaboom) he doesn't know what he's doing. But...