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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.

Caged Women: Hounds of Love, Berlin Syndrome, The Beguiled

by | 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...
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BFI London Film Festival 2014: Hard To Be A God

by | October 25, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

What better way to ease yourself gently into a film festival than with a nearly-three-hour black and white Russian film based on an sf novel I've never read? Aleksei German's film (based on a novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky)  is set on a planet which has been...
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Camille Claudel 1915

by | July 26, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

This meeting of two arthouse legends – Bruno Dumont, a director who has previously always refused to work with professional actors, and Juliette (Chocolat) Binoche – is heralded by posters screaming BINOCHE CLAUDEL DUMONT, in the manner of ads for an action movie...
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More Quite Good Films of 2014

by | February 1, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

L FOR LEISURE The fact that people are nostalgic for the 90's is beguilingly weird to me - I was there, and barely noticed them – but maybe this is why I enjoyed Whitney Horn and Lev Kalman's goofy, dreamy, possibly inconsequential L For Leisure so very much. It was...
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Frightfest 2015 Day One

by | September 12, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

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...
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Under The Skin

by | April 26, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

I took a half day off work to see this, and thus missed Ann Widdecombe on the Jeremy Vine show talking about 'What It Means To Be Human'. However, this offered a roughly comparable experience. An attractive alien disguised as movie star Scarlett Johanssen drives round...
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Frightfest 2017: Outliers

by | 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...
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Mandy / Knife + Heart / Suspiria

by | February 16, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

MANDY Mandy sold out very quickly at the London Film Festival, so I was pleased, having failed to secure a ticket, to see that it was showing in that very same week at the Prince Charles Cinema, which meant that I could see it for a fiver rather that sixteen quid. It...
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BFI London Film Festival 2017: Brawl In Cell Block 99 and Let The Corpses Tan

by | January 1, 2018 | movies, reviews, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 Violence. It can leave a nasty taste in the mouth, and perhaps it ought to. Brawl In Cell Block 99 certainly left a nasty taste in my mouth, but I'm almost convinced that this was intentional. Not intentional as regards just my mouth of course....
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Talk To Me / Asteroid City / Nope

by | September 23, 2023 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

TALK TO ME Directors Danny and Michael Phillipou come to us from YouTube, where they operate some sort of channel apparently, which may explain why this BFI showing was full of young people. They were probably taking advantage of the BFI under-25's offer (as if youth...
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