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.
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...
Blind
by Martin | May 30, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
The old Renoir cinema has resurfaced as the Curzon Bloomsbury. It hasn’t got any bigger on top but underneath it’s a rabbit warren, leading me down dark tunnels in search of the ‘Minema’ screen. This sounds small, and so it proves to be – so very intimate that the...
Damnation Alley (1977)
by Martin | August 9, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Given Roger Zelazny's reputation as an SF writer I can only assume that this is a bowlderized version of his 1969 novel. The very fact that it's showing at 8:00 of a Saturday morning on the Horror Channel suggests that it may not be very challenging. Still, I've set...
The Secret of Dorian Gray (1969)
by Martin | March 11, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Ah, Valentine's Day – my favourite feast day, since my single status means I don't have to observe it. Nevertheless I was moved to recognise it to the extent of braving rail replacement services to get to the Barbican, where film programmer Josh Saco (aka Cigarette...
Frightfest 2017: Evil Twins
by Martin | October 1, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
FASHIONISTA As regular readers would know (if they existed), Frightfest usually marks the one time in the calendar year where I don't go to the cinema alone: Dave comes along. Or at least he does for part of the time before he has to duck out due to work commitments...
More Madness: Madeline’s Madeline and Thunder Road (LFF 2018)
by Martin | December 24, 2018 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
MADELINE'S MADELINE The new film from director Josephine Decker (Thou Wast Mild And Lovely) is a gripping and vivid account of some days in the life of the eponymous schizophrenic teenager (an impressive Helena Howard), who has joined a theatrical troupe which seems...
Monster Mulch: Vintage Creatures From Talking Pictures
by Martin | May 7, 2018 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
I like to think that there is no such thing as a bad film. Philosophically speaking, there is no such thing as a film at all, since films only 'really' exist in the watching of them, and this is done by people, and no two people will experience precisely the same...
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...
45 Years
by Martin | October 24, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling play Geoff and Kate, a couple in their 70's who seem to think they are happily married until his ex-girlfriend Katya turns up, entombed in ice in a Swiss glacier and apparently unchanged since she fell into a fissure back in 1962....
Horromford
by Martin | May 19, 2024 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Soon every town in the country will have its own horror film festival, which I suppose is no bad thing, although I could hardly keep up when it was just Frightfest. I saw one film that escaped me at Frightfest (Austin Jennings' Eight Eyes) in late January at...