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Frightfest 2017: The Glass Coffin

by Martin | September 23, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Some kind of religious revival seems to be going on outside Frightfest's new (old) home, the Cineworld (formerly Empire) Leicester Square. A sign saying 'Repent or Perish' has been held aloft. I wonder if this is particularly aimed at the Frightfest crowd. Maybe it'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...

THE UNTAMED RAW NOCTURAMA

by Martin | January 15, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

THE UNTAMED This London Film Festival showing represented my first visit to the Picturehouse Central. Entering, you feel like you've walked into a bar, and a busy one – and you have. Retreating in horror from all this socialising, which is not what I come to the...

Sins Of The Fleshapoids (1965)/Orphans Of The Cosmos (2008)

by Martin | January 18, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

I settled down for this Kuchar Brothers double-bill at the BFI with three cushions (Christmas presents for Mum) in carrier bags, a burden bulky enough to suggest that I should have splashed out on another ticket. With an amused gay man on my left and Brian Sewell...

Frightfest 2014: Cheerleaders, Show Pieces, and the Babadook

by Martin | September 14, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE As is well-known, the only way in which girls can achieve any kind of power in that hellish jock-dominated microcosm of American society known as high school is either by means of their bodies or through witchcraft. And witchcraft doesn't work. Or...

White Bird In A Blizzard

by Martin | April 12, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

This adaptation of Laura Kasischke's young adult novel finds director Gregg Araki in less than full-on mode, and my first impression, such is the uncertainty of tone here, is that when he isn't in full-on mode (eg: Nowhere, Kaboom) he doesn't know what he's doing. But...

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

by Martin | January 2, 2025 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

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...

Frightfest 2016 Day Two

by Martin | October 22, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

FURY OF THE DEMON On day two I returned unaccompanied to Shepherd's Bush as Dave had to get up early on Sunday, but another recurring character in this blog - Michael Blyth, BFI cult film programmer - was sitting nearby for the first two screenings, which was oddly...

American Fiction

by Martin | February 24, 2024 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

I haven't seen this literary satire, Cord Jefferson's debut film, based on a 2001 book by Percival Everett, but I was fully intending to until I saw the trailer. It put me off. Judging a film by its trailer is a bit like judging a book by its cover, but you can in...

L’il Quinquin

by Martin | January 18, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

My jaw dropped when I heard that divisive auteur Bruno Dumont's next film would be a comedy about cops, and remained in that state throughout the three-hour plus length of the film (actually a four-part TV series, served up in a single showing at the London Film...