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 Prince, The Animal Kingdom, Behind The Mountains and Birth/Rebirth
by Martin | April 1, 2024 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
A PRINCE Pierre Creton's film featured in both John Waters' top ten and Sight and Sound's top 50, so it should have been made for me – but there's no accounting for taste. All I can say is that it certainly gives you the feeling that director/co-writer Creton knew...
Frightfest 2022
by Martin | December 18, 2022 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
'Keep On Rollin', says a T-shirt on a little girl outside the Prince Charles Cinema, which I at first imagined was a reference to Jean Rollin, French director of sex vampire films and subject of the documentary Orchestrator of Storms, showing at Frightfest. The image...
Barbican Nights: Into The Woods Part Two
by Martin | August 5, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
EYES OF FIRE (1986) This, Josh Saco explains, is a 'lost' film, and just because it is here tonight screening in front of us that doesn't mean it has been found again. I mean, who are we to 'find' it? Even the director, Avery Crounse, was happy to let it go and move...
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...
Don’t Step On It, It Might Be Jake Gyllenhaal: Nightcrawler/Enemy
by Martin | April 4, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), the central figure of Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler, resembles nothing so much as a cockroach that has unaccountably taken on human form – emerging out of the LA night as a petty thief with aspirations, he soon graduates into a 'nightcrawler',...
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
by Martin | March 1, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
An Iranian vampire Western? Is this what the world really needs? On the evidence presented here – yes. Not that this is really Iranian, since it is shot in America and is set in a fictional (Iranian) place called ‘Bad City’. Not that it’s really a Western either,...
mother!
by Martin | November 12, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
The release of Darren Aronofky's latest film was preceded by a director interview by Trevor Johnston in Sight & Sound urging viewers not to read it until they'd seen the film, since (even more than is usually the case) the more you knew about this film in advance...
Kinoteka 2019. Monument
by Martin | May 4, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
'It won't be easy', warned writer-director Jagoda Szelc before her second film began, which was possibly an example of what she later referred to as her as her 'dry humour' – does anyone go to the Polish Film Festival expecting uncomplicated fun and games? Not that...
London Film Festival 2016 – Further Off The Beaten Track
by Martin | January 29, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
EYES OF MY MOTHER This curious little black-and-white number, from America, has received some acclaim but to these eyes was not quite curious enough. It's the story of Francisca, who at the start of the film is a young girl leading an idyllic existence in a remote...
The Invisible Life
by Martin | May 25, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
It was a lovely day, sunshine sparkling on the Thames, Green Park bustling with life. The freshness in the air seemed almost to be trying to dissuade me against seeing a bleak existential drama about death at the ICA, but I was determined - even if, in the event, it...