Select Page

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.

O Lucky Man! (1973) etc….

My introduction to Lindsay Anderson was being shown the 1968 film If.... in (judiciously edited) half hour portions at secondary school in the 70's in a lesson called 'Design for Living', a rather random class which was used to dispense whatever we had in the way of...

The Million Eyes Of Sumuru (1967)

'I have a million eyes, for I am Sumuru', says Shirley Eaton in voiceover at the beginning of this particular disaster. She doesn't really have a million eyes - that's the first disappointment. The notional 'million eyes' belong to her followers. Sumuru leads an...

BFI London Film Festival 2021: Age and Agency

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...

Exhibition

Director Joanna Hogg's first two films – Unrelated (2007) and Archipelago (2010) – are about upper-middle class English families on holiday in Tuscany and the Scilly Isles respectively. They were more interested in absorbing you in a landscape and situation than in...

Three Against Nature

THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA (1976) 'An insult to any audience' concludes the review of Lewis John Carlino's film The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (hereafter referred to as Sailor) in my damaged-in-transit Waterstones-freebie edition of the...

BFI London Film Festival 2014: Three Horrors at the Odeon Covent Garden

SPRING If you thought Richard Linklater's Before Sunset might have been improved if Julie Delpy had periodically turned into a squid (and is there anyone who doesn't?), then this may well be the film for you. American backpacker Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) hooks up with...

Under The Skin

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...

Tales That Witness Madness (1973)

In 1965 Dr. Terror's House of Horrors kicked off a series of 'anthology' horror films, mostly made by Amicus, of which Tales That Witness Madness (not made by Amicus) is often dismissed as a peculiarly ropey example, although its director Freddie Francis - who also...

Frightfest 2019 Part One – Home Discomforts

Set in my ways as I am I prefer to buy my Frightfest tickets in person, at whatever passes for a 'box office' nowadays. Over the years this has become more and more difficult and now entails leaving it to the very last moment. This time around I thought my resistance...

Popcorn (1991)

Although I don't think it has been languishing in obscurity exactly (it's showing on the Horror Channel as I write) Popcorn is a film I've somehow missed. Luckily Michael Blyth, masterminding the BFI’s Cult strand, has given it an airing and thus allowed me to atone...