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The Revenant

by Martin | May 29, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Early reports of this film had audiences scandalised by the sight of star Leonardo di Caprio being raped by a bear. Three times. I suspect that this was hype worked up by the studio's marketing department, but I suppose it depends on whether you think people are more...

Burke And Hare (1971)

by Martin | January 26, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

This is director Vernon Sewell’s last film and there’s something fitting about that: after two ventures into the more fantastical side of horror (The Blood Beast Terror and The Curse Of The Crimson Altar from 1966 and 1968 respectively) neither of which went out of...

Post-Horror: Men / Bergman Island

by Martin | July 30, 2022 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

MEN I see that the Barbican are putting on a summer season of 'post-horror' films. Is that a film you see after a horror film, for light relief perhaps? Well no, apparently – it's just another iteration of our old friend 'elevated horror'. So the films in question...

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quay De Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

by Martin | April 14, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

CAUTION: Pre-lockdown content. May include allusions to leaving the house. Are there awards for audiences? Sometimes I feel that I deserve recognition for the efforts I make to catch one-off showings of alienating arthouse films – or at least, that they should pay me...

Frightfest 2014: Open Windows, Nekromantik and Der Samurai

by Martin | September 21, 2014 | movies, reviews, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

OPEN WINDOWS In an age when you can watch films on your phone, here's another novelty – going to the cinema to see a film whose action takes place entirely on someone's laptop screen. I think it did, anyway – I was frankly a little befuddled by the end. Bear in mind...

Phantoms of the Opera

by Martin | October 3, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

IL MOSTRO DELLA OPERA (1964) In the days before the cities became tombs and the cinemas morgues I went to a showing of this obscure Italian film at the Barbican on a Saturday morning, only to discover that I was encroaching upon a Phantom Of The Opera symposium. Who...

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...

Apples / In The Earth

by Martin | July 17, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

APPLES Who on earth, returning to the cinema after – well OK, during – a global pandemic would go and see a film that is about the pandemic, even if obliquely? About six people (including me) is the answer, if this afternoon showing is anything to go by. Apples seems...

Exhibition

by Martin | May 11, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

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...

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...