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.
Frightfest 2019 Part One – Home Discomforts
by Martin | September 21, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Set in my ways as I am I prefer to buy my Frightfest tickets in person, at whatever passes for a 'box office' nowadays. Over the years this has become more and more difficult and now entails leaving it to the very last moment. This time around I thought my resistance...
Apples / In The Earth
by Martin | July 17, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
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...
Barbican Nights – Into the Woods Part One
by Martin | July 9, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
In an unusual attempt at consistency I thought I'd review this folk horror season curated by Cigarette Burns (Josh Saco), consisting of four films showing at the Barbican during May, the first being: THE COMPANY OF WOLVES (1984) Only I didn't go to that one. I...
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 -...
LFF 2019: Jallikattu/Saint Maud
by Martin | November 14, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Ah yes, the London Film Festival. I remember that. Well it did happen this year, it was just 'different' – they even tried to suggest that the festival we had (mostly online) represented some kind of exciting innovation rather than an attempt to pretend that a film...
Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)
by Martin | June 18, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Who the hell's Diane Arbus? If this is your reaction to the above title, then you probably won't get much out of this film. I knew little about Diane Arbus, and having seen the film, now feel that I know less. Which is not the film's fault. It begins with a disclaimer...
Norte: The End Of History
by Martin | August 17, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
'You do know this film is four hours and ten minutes long?', asked the man doling out the tickets at the ICA. In fact, I knew about the four hours but not the ten minutes – but I said yes. He advised me to go to the toilet beforehand, as if I needed to be told. That...
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...
Aaaaaaaah!
by Martin | March 20, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Two men (Steve Oram and Tom Meeten) who only communicate in ape-like grunts, are in the woods mourning the passing of a loved one (we assume) by pissing on a framed photo of her. That done, they set off into the city, to bring (so we might imagine) their primitive...
Two Takes on Modern Etiquette at the BFI London Film Festival 2015
by Martin | December 13, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE INVITATION This showed (at the Vue Islington) in the Cult strand, but it deserves the widest possible audience. Struggling to get over the accidental death of his son two years previously, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) goes to a reunion dinner of old friends hosted...