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 2019 Part One – Home Discomforts
by Martin | September 21, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
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...
Weapons /Bring Her Back
by Martin | January 18, 2026 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
WEAPONS There was a lot of hype around writer-director Zach Cregger's follow-up to the promising Barbarian – I remember noticing a website ranking the characters in Weapons in order of how 'iconic' they are. No doubt it is old-fashioned of me to expect to wait a few...
Two Takes on Modern Etiquette at the BFI London Film Festival 2015
by Martin | December 13, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE INVITATION This showed (at the Vue Islington) in the Cult strand, but it deserves the widest possible audience. Struggling to get over the accidental death of his son two years previously, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) goes to a reunion dinner of old friends hosted...
Blue / Trog (1993 and 1970)
by Martin | November 1, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
In his introduction to Derek Jarman's Blue John Waters, who selected it as one of his favourite British films for a celebration of all things JW at the BFI, recalled how the first time he saw it the cinema had posters up warning punters that Blue was a film that...
So This Is Real Life – Three Documentaries
by Martin | January 8, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
FURTHER BEYOND This is a film about the making of a biopic about Ambrosio O'Higgins, who – back in the 18th century - travelled from Ireland to Spain to Chile, where he became quite a big deal and his son Bernardo even more of one. In a Tristram Shandy kind of fashion...
BFI London Film Festival 2014: Three Horrors at the Odeon Covent Garden
by Martin | November 8, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
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...
The Devil’s Rain (1975)
by Martin | April 26, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
I've taken to listening to Shaun Keaveny on BBC6 Music in the mornings, via my TV – specifically Freeview 707. A couple of months ago my just-awoken fingers were fumblingly pressing those figures out on the remote and hesitated too long, inadvertently accessing 70, at...
Power Games: The Childhood of a Leader and The Student
by Martin | February 18, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER This is out on DVD now, I discovered it in Sainsbury's, the cast staring balefully out at me from the cover and seeming to condemn me for my lack of professionalism in not getting round to review this back in September 2016, when I...
Frightfest 2014: The Green Inferno
by Martin | August 30, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Movies such as Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox and Ruggero Deodato's powerful Cannibal Holocaust really do seem to belong to a certain time and place – 70 and early 80's Italy – so it was intriguing to see how Eli Roth of Cabin Fever and Hostel fame would fare in...
Possession of Joel Delaney (1972) / The Vigil (2019) / Hatching (2022)
by Martin | October 22, 2022 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
POSSESSION OF JOEL DELANEY This screening (part of Dukefest, a small festival curated by the Duke Mitchell Film Club) was busy, though thankfully not so busy that when a person of enormous stature sat in front of me I couldn't just shift to the seat next to me. What...