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 2023
by Martin | October 21, 2023 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
FrightFest has a new sponsor and is now the Pigeon Shrine FrightFest. It has to be said that Pigeon Shrine isn't the most inspiring name – 'the Pigeon Shrine FrightFest' sounded suspiciously like a bargain basement version of the original, and my fears seemed to be...
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...
Goodnight Mommy
by Martin | April 9, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
TV presenter Mommy (Suzanne Wuest) returns from plastic surgery with a bandaged face and a bad temper, so that her twin boys Elias and Lukas start to wonder if she's really Mommy at all, the question mark over her identity deftly conveyed in a scene where she plays a...
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...
Kinoteka 2019: Love Express and Fugue
by Martin | May 11, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
LOVE EXPRESS: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF WALERIAN BOROWCZYK Kuba Mikurda's documentary presents a pretty standard view of Borowczyk, which won't be a problem for people who have no idea who Borowczyk is I suppose, and they are the vast majority of the population, and...
Pacifiction/Infinity Pool/The Outwaters/Beau Is Afraid
by Martin | July 1, 2023 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
PACIFICTION Back in 2013 I almost killed myself hurrying from a London Film Festival showing of Denis Coté's Vic And Flo Saw A Bear on the South Bank, to Albert Serra's Story of My Death in Leicester Square. Given the title of Serra's film, it would have been an...
The Mad Ghoul (1943)
by Martin | January 2, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Director James Hogan's film begins with an unusually delicate situation for a mad scientist flick – the heroine Isabel (Evelyn Ankers) has fallen out of love with the hero Ted (David Bruce). Isabel confides this melancholy fact to Dr. Alfred Morris, Ted’s chemistry...
BFI London Film Festival 2017: The Wound, Most Beautiful Island
by Martin | January 28, 2018 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE WOUND Up for the Sutherland First Feature Award was this South African tale whose hero Xolani (Nakhane Touré) returns every year to the countryside to become a 'caregiver' to initiates in a tribal ritual wherein boys become men by dint of such activities as...
Barbican Nights: Into The Woods Part Two
by Martin | August 5, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
EYES OF FIRE (1986) This, Josh Saco explains, is a 'lost' film, and just because it is here tonight screening in front of us that doesn't mean it has been found again. I mean, who are we to 'find' it? Even the director, Avery Crounse, was happy to let it go and move...
London Film Festival 2019: Tremors / La Llorona
by Martin | January 19, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
TREMORS According to writer-director Jayro Bustamente only about four films are made in Guatemala per year. I have now seen two, which pretty much makes me an expert in Guatemalan cinema. I could probably write a book on it. Not to be confused with a Kevin Bacon film...