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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.

A Brexit Trilogy

GOD'S OWN COUNTRY (2017) Brexit – is it humanity asserting its freedom to be perverse in the face of global capitalism, or is it just a backward-leaning movement composed of people whose preciousness about their 'British identity' makes you wonder who the real...

Death Car On The Freeway (1979)

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...

LFF 2019: Jallikattu/Saint Maud

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...

Frightfest 2015: Day Two

Tenderness Of The Wolves (1973) Don't you just love a true story? This is the one about serial killer Fritz Haarman, who preyed (sexually and murderously) on young boys and drank their blood in post WWI Germany, and who also provided the inspiration for Fritz Lang's...

Strongroom (1962)

Vernon Sewell's career in British film started, weirdly enough, with a German film - Morgenrot (1933) a collaboration with Gustav Klimt's illegitimate son (one of them) that premiered in front of Adolf Hitler. Apparently Hitler liked it. His next collaborative...

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...

Blink Twice and Heretic meet The Phantom of the Monastery (1934)

BLINK TWICE Waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) and her friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) accept an invite to the private island of tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum), where everybody seems to be having a fantastic time – or are they? Well, maybe not the women, who have...

The Voices

A toy factory worker in a small American town, Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) is your standard eager-to-please psychotic passing for normal, at least until he starts ticking the box marked ‘serial killer’ by stabbing his indifferent love-object (Gemma Arterton) to death and...

London Film Festival 2019: Tremors / La Llorona

TREMORS According to writer-director Jayro Bustamente only about four films are made in Guatemala per year. I have now seen two, which pretty much makes me an expert in Guatemalan cinema. I could probably write a book on it. Not to be confused with a Kevin Bacon film...

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...