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LFF 2018: Holiday / This Teacher / Cam

by Martin | January 20, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

HOLIDAY I took over a week's holiday for the London Film Festival in 2018. This leaves me with no anecdotes about my experiences when I get back to work but it means that I can 'visit' many different countries without the hassle of actually having to go anywhere...

Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark

by Martin | May 11, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

I've wanted to see the 1973 made-for-TV movie Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark ever since I read about it in Halliwell's Film Guide in the early 80's. I never have, but no doubt it would be just as disappointing as Troy Nixey's 2010 remake, which I watched – in order to...

Popcorn (1991)

by Martin | May 4, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Although I don't think it has been languishing in obscurity exactly (it's showing on the Horror Channel as I write) Popcorn is a film I've somehow missed. Luckily Michael Blyth, masterminding the BFI’s Cult strand, has given it an airing and thus allowed me to atone...

The Woods Have Legs – Three Films

by Martin | December 3, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Blair Witch The woods! A simple enough phrase but so ominously evocative – I was quite intrigued on discovering that director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett's film The Woods was due to premiere at Frightfest this year. I found much to enjoy in Barrett/Wingard's...

Frightfest 2014: Open Windows, Nekromantik and Der Samurai

by Martin | September 21, 2014 | movies, reviews, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

OPEN WINDOWS In an age when you can watch films on your phone, here's another novelty – going to the cinema to see a film whose action takes place entirely on someone's laptop screen. I think it did, anyway – I was frankly a little befuddled by the end. Bear in mind...

Monster On The Campus (1958)

by Martin | May 1, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

This begins with college professor Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) completing his collection of busts depicting the various stages of human evolution with one of 'Modern Woman', taken from his fiancée's face. Subsequently, as if this is the peak of evolution and there's...

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...

Kothanodi (BFI London Film Festival 2015)

by Martin | November 1, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Indian horror films are hard to come by – and this isn't one either, or not exactly. Nevertheless, Kothanodi (it means 'river of fables'), a compendium of four interlinked folk tales from Assam, is almost grim enough to qualify. In the most optimistic of these tales...

LFF 2018: Tumbbad / The Nightshifter

by Martin | January 13, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

TUMBBAD Indian horror films are something of a rarity, but Kothanodi was one of my highlights of 2015's London Film Festival, and that was a horror film – sort of. This one, my first film of this year's festival, definitely is - or wants to be. It begins with an...

Frightfest 2021

by Martin | December 14, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

NIGHT DRIVE A mysterious fugue enveloped Frightfest last year – it's like it didn't really happen. But suddenly here I am again in the Empire Leicester Square, and – after a few 'missing' years - Dave is even back, and sitting next to me. It all feels suspiciously...