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.
Frightfest 2017: Outliers
by Martin | 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...
Comings Of Age – Three Attempts From The BFI London Film Festival 2015
by Martin | December 28, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
DER NACHTMAHR Not German for 'nightmare', ein nachtmahr is more like a thing from a nightmare, so the director - German artist AKIZ – tells us. In the case of his film that thing is a strange creature resembling a cross between Belial from Basket Case and Garfield,...
The Brand New Testament (BFI London Film Festival 2015)
by Martin | November 14, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Jaco Van Dormael's film might end up being remembered as the one where Catherine Deneuve sleeps with a gorilla, but that's the least of it. Benoît Poolvoorde is God, a middle-aged slob who never leaves his apartment and spends most of his time on his computer,...
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...
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...
BFI London Film Festival 2014: Metamorphoses/White God
by Martin | December 7, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
METAMORPHOSES Christophe Honoré's film is based on something I've not read – Ovid's Metamorphoses – but no need to be alarmed: the stories are spelled out very clearly. Indeed, almost too clearly. The set-up is that Europa (Amira Akili) is a schoolgirl learning about...
Mandy / Knife + Heart / Suspiria
by Martin | 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...
Frightfest 2016 Day Three
by Martin | October 23, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
MAN UNDERGROUND Or do I mean Day Four since I skipped Day Three? Oh what the hell. Nobody's paying me to do this. By this stage (Bank Holiday Monday) 'not really horror' (a term coined by Anton Bitel in a recent article for Sight and Sound online) seemed to be turning...
The Incredible Melting Man (1977)
by Martin | July 25, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Arrow Video keeps up the good work of supplying us with pristine transfers of films that possibly don't deserve it with this DVD/Blu-Ray combo of William Sachs' 70's creature feature. 'Alex Rebar as the Incredible Melting Man' the opening credits say, denying Rebar's...
Our Time / Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
by Martin | September 7, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
OUR TIME There was quite a high turnout for this three-hour epic of directorial self-laceration from Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, although admittedly this was at the Minema screen at the Curzon Bloomsbury, which seats about 20 people. I had a guy ahead of me...