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Frightfest 2014: Bad Milo!

by Martin | September 7, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Frightfest has relocated from the Empire Leicester Square to the Vue Leicester Square, which seems to be a good thing. No more cramped Discovery Screens, we now have the run of numerous larger screens over several floors. And it's even nearer Burger King, where I sit...

Frightfest 2015: Day Two

by Martin | October 4, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

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...

The Colossus Of New York (1958) / The Alligator People (1959)

by Martin | May 27, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

In American monster movies of the early 50's the monstrous generally had a scientific explanation – of course the science didn't always stand up to close examination, but then it rarely got any. It was only required to generate panic - for the length of the film, at...

BFI London Film Festival 2022: Lockdown Lingers

by Martin | January 29, 2023 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

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...

Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey / The Brain From Planet Arous (1957)

by Martin | December 2, 2023 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY Not all bad films are good. The inspiration behind Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey was apparently writer-director Rhys Frake-Waterfield's understanding that A.A. Milne's characters were going out of copyright, and so fair game for...

BFI London Film Festival 2021: Age and Agency

by Martin | January 30, 2022 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

LA ABUELA In this Spanish film from Rec director Paco Plaza, Susana (Almudena Amor), a fashion model on the verge of success, has to take a career break when her grandmother Pilar (Vera Valdez) has a brain haemorrhage and she has to go and look after her, at least...

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...

The Witch

by Martin | April 9, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

I saw this at the Odeon Covent Garden. Amazingly, they are only charging £6.00 a ticket at the moment for any showing Monday to Thursday. I hope this doesn't get out, or my chances of getting an entire screen to myself (that ever-elusive dream) will diminish even...

A Cure For Wellness

by Martin | March 25, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

A slice of Hollywood Eurogothic from Gore Pirates of the Caribbean Verbinski, this begins quite promisingly in a vein of deadpan camp – a mode which serves it well enough until it goes (almost literally) down the toilet. Lockhart (Dane DeHaan), a young, reptilian Wall...

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...