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.
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...
Mothra (1961)
by Martin | July 12, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
After a self-imposed double-bill of Camille Claudel 1915 and Miss Violence at the Curzon Soho, what better way to cool off than with a showing of Mothra, at the Prince Charles off Leicester Square? So I reasoned. And it only cost a pound, if you were a member. I was....
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...
Power Games: The Childhood of a Leader and The Student
by Martin | February 18, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER This is out on DVD now, I discovered it in Sainsbury's, the cast staring balefully out at me from the cover and seeming to condemn me for my lack of professionalism in not getting round to review this back in September 2016, when I...
Comings Of Age – Three Attempts From The BFI London Film Festival 2015
by Martin | December 28, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
DER NACHTMAHR Not German for 'nightmare', ein nachtmahr is more like a thing from a nightmare, so the director - German artist AKIZ – tells us. In the case of his film that thing is a strange creature resembling a cross between Belial from Basket Case and Garfield,...
Frightfest 2016 Day Three
by Martin | October 23, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
MAN UNDERGROUND Or do I mean Day Four since I skipped Day Three? Oh what the hell. Nobody's paying me to do this. By this stage (Bank Holiday Monday) 'not really horror' (a term coined by Anton Bitel in a recent article for Sight and Sound online) seemed to be turning...
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...
The Devil Outside / Permanent Green Light
by Martin | March 16, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE DEVIL OUTSIDE In writer-director Andrew Hulme's second film (after gangster drama Snow In Paradise, which I haven't seen but will be sure to catch up with – no doubt on London Live - one day) our adolescent hero Robert (Noah Carson) finds the disconnect between...
Blue / Trog (1993 and 1970)
by Martin | November 1, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
In his introduction to Derek Jarman's Blue John Waters, who selected it as one of his favourite British films for a celebration of all things JW at the BFI, recalled how the first time he saw it the cinema had posters up warning punters that Blue was a film that...
Frankenstein 1970
by Martin | April 20, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
This begins generically but effectively with a screaming girl being pursued across the (German, it turns out) countryside by a nightmarishly-contorted Frankenstein's monster whose face we never see; this proves, however, to be part of a TV programme being shot in the...