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: 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...
Foxcatcher/Whiplash
by Martin | March 1, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
I may boast of my aversion to the mainstream but do I ever really escape it, or is it like Christopher Marlowe said: ‘Where we are is the mainstream and the mainstream is where we ever are’? (OK, he was talking about Hell but it’s the same idea.) I have been slightly...
White Devils: Get Out, The Transfiguration and Whity (1971)
by Martin | May 21, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
GET OUT In Get Out a black American guy Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) goes with his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) to visit her (rich) family, only to find them a little overbearing in their acceptance of him. Sure, they're liberal, but as he wearily agrees with...
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...
Under The Skin
by Martin | April 26, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
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...
O Lucky Man! (1973) etc….
by Martin | August 25, 2024 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
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...
Kinoteka 2019. Monument
by Martin | May 4, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
'It won't be easy', warned writer-director Jagoda Szelc before her second film began, which was possibly an example of what she later referred to as her as her 'dry humour' – does anyone go to the Polish Film Festival expecting uncomplicated fun and games? Not that...
In Pictures 2: Rope (1948) /Possessor (2020)
by Martin | August 30, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
ROPE On the extras on my DVD of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope screenwriter Arthur Laurents nails several of the reasons why this adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's play (based on the Leopold/Loeb case in which a couple of students felt entitled to kill a 14 year old boy...
Eyeball (1975) / Short Night Of Glass Dolls (1971) / Spasmo (1974)
by Martin | August 5, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
EYEBALL The original Italian title of Umberto Lenzi's Eyeball translates as Red Cats In A Glass Labyrinth, which makes very little sense and is all the more impressive for it. However, there is no doubt that Eyeball is more to the point. This giallo is about a busload...
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...