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.
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....
Slack Bay (2016) / Zombie Lake (1977)
by Martin | April 22, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
It was last November that I went to the Cine Lumiere to catch up with the latest offering from Bruno Dumont, showing at the French Film Festival, and it has taken me up until now to process it. In fact that's a lie – I still haven't processed it. In Slack Bay Dumont...
BFI London Film Festival 2017: Rift, My Friend Dahmer, Hagazussa – A Heathen’s Curse
by Martin | December 3, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
RIFT Apparently the Icelandic title of Rift (Rökkur) more closely corresponds to 'Twilight', but that title, as the director Erlingur Thoroddsen drily points out, was already taken. Though not terribly exciting as a title, Rift is apt enough for this story of two gay...
LFF 2019: Jallikattu/Saint Maud
by Martin | November 14, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Ah yes, the London Film Festival. I remember that. Well it did happen this year, it was just 'different' – they even tried to suggest that the festival we had (mostly online) represented some kind of exciting innovation rather than an attempt to pretend that a film...
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...
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...
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...
Comings Of Age – Three Attempts From The BFI London Film Festival 2015
by Martin | December 28, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
DER NACHTMAHR Not German for 'nightmare', ein nachtmahr is more like a thing from a nightmare, so the director - German artist AKIZ – tells us. In the case of his film that thing is a strange creature resembling a cross between Belial from Basket Case and Garfield,...
Frightfest 2018 – The Cleaning Lady, Braid and Piercing
by Martin | September 23, 2018 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE CLEANING LADY Frightfest is now 'owned' by Arrow Video, which makes sense. The only difference I could see was that there were a lot of free DVD's lying around, which I certainly wasn't complaining about (I'll save that for when I watch them). The first two films...
Kothanodi (BFI London Film Festival 2015)
by Martin | November 1, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Indian horror films are hard to come by – and this isn't one either, or not exactly. Nevertheless, Kothanodi (it means 'river of fables'), a compendium of four interlinked folk tales from Assam, is almost grim enough to qualify. In the most optimistic of these tales...