Select Page

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.

Weapons /Bring Her Back

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...

Burke And Hare (1971)

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...

Attack Of The Giant Leeches (1959)

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)....

mother!

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...

Censor / Surge

CENSOR Prano Bailey-Bond's Censor makes a link between censorship and (emotional, psychological) repression that's pretty obvious, but the film has a knack of making the obvious work – which has the additional virtue of being thematically appropriate. After all, the...

Three Against Nature

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...

Amulet /Master

AMULET Can horror be 'progressive'? Actor and now director Romola Garai talks about 'changing the narrative' of horror with her first film but I'm not sure that she's managed it (what is this 'narrative' anyway?) though she might have thrown a few spokes in its...

London Film Festival 2019: Tremors / La Llorona

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...

Power Games: The Childhood of a Leader and The Student

  THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER This is out on DVD now, I discovered it in Sainsbury's, the cast staring balefully out at me from the cover and seeming to condemn me for my lack of professionalism in not getting round to review this back in September 2016, when I...

Mothra (1961)

After a self-imposed double-bill of Camille Claudel 1915 and Miss Violence at the Curzon Soho, what better way to cool off than with a showing of Mothra, at the Prince Charles off Leicester Square? So I reasoned. And it only cost a pound, if you were a member. I was....