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.
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 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...
mother!
by Martin | November 12, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
The release of Darren Aronofky's latest film was preceded by a director interview by Trevor Johnston in Sight & Sound urging viewers not to read it until they'd seen the film, since (even more than is usually the case) the more you knew about this film in advance...
BFI London Film Festival 2021: Age and Agency
by Martin | January 30, 2022 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
LA ABUELA In this Spanish film from Rec director Paco Plaza, Susana (Almudena Amor), a fashion model on the verge of success, has to take a career break when her grandmother Pilar (Vera Valdez) has a brain haemorrhage and she has to go and look after her, at least...
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...
Three Against Nature
by Martin | June 10, 2018 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA (1976) 'An insult to any audience' concludes the review of Lewis John Carlino's film The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (hereafter referred to as Sailor) in my damaged-in-transit Waterstones-freebie edition of the...
Attack Of The Giant Leeches (1959)
by Martin | July 23, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Into my life comes a dumpbin full of DVD's at £3.00 each, temporarily arresting my progress through Fopp. Movie Legends. They don't look promising. Murky covers and nothing on the back but a plot summary (that does however, in the case of Attack, include the ending)....
Empire of the Ants (1977) / Contamination (1980) / Alien 2: On Earth (1981)
by Martin | January 5, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
EMPIRE OF THE ANTS (1977) Bert I Gordon, director of such vintage extravaganzas as 1958's Attack Of The 50ft Woman briefly returned to cinema screens in the 1970's with a couple of films which were, nominally, adaptations of H G Wells stories, though B.I.G. (note...
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...
Downton Abbey (2019) / Ray and Liz (2018)
by Martin | April 7, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
DOWNTON ABBEY For many years the TV series Downton Abbey, created by Julian Fellowes, mined the Sunday night craving for reassurance about the past, presenting it as a world in which everyone knew their place. The past, at least the past we never knew personally, is a...