BFI
DVD/Blu-ray: Madame de…Tuesday, 23 May 2017
Initially, Madame de… feels as if it might wear out its welcome. What seems a wearisome exposition on how privileged people with too much time on their hands fill their hours with vacuity gradually turns into an incisive discourse on the power of... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: German Concentration Camps Factual SurveyTuesday, 02 May 2017
This is an impeccably restored presentation of the 1945 feature-length documentary that was intended to be shown in German cinemas in order to counter any remaining support for Nazism. Backed by the British Ministry of Information, it was overseen... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Letter to BrezhnevSunday, 30 April 2017
Letter to Brezhnev, released in 1985, was a delightful curio with sharp edges. A trans-cultural riff on Romeo and Juliet, it told of the sudden romance that erupts between a Kirkby girl and a visiting Soviet sailor one night on the tiles in... Read more... |
DVD: Martin Scorsese - Two Early FilmsSunday, 23 April 2017
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More was Ellen Burstyn’s baby. Determined to use her clout after The Exorcist to make a film from a woman’s viewpoint, she offered Robert Getchell’s script to a director who confessed he knew nothing about women. “But,”... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Crying GameTuesday, 21 February 2017
Does a review of a 25-year-old film need a spoiler alert? Much of the success of The Crying Game – its 1992 release earned both six Oscar nominations and huge box office returns (although not enough to save its producers from bankruptcy) – is... Read more... |
DVD: The Spring River Flows EastSunday, 19 February 2017
There’s rich irony in the timelining of 1940s Chinese blockbuster The Spring River Flows East. Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli’s melodrama dates its 14-year timespan – events unroll from 1931 to the end of the war in 1945 – with reference to the... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Glass ShieldFriday, 20 January 2017
Charles Burnett is one of the neglected pioneers of African-American film-making. He first won attention back in 1978 with his poetic, powerful debut film, Killer of Sheep. Acclaimed by critics and respected by his fellow directors, Burnett has... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Odds Against TomorrowSaturday, 26 November 2016
Robert Wise directed the 1959 bank heist thriller Odds Against Tomorrow after the classic film noir cycle had ended, but it's an exemplary noir nonetheless. In its day it was an important transitional work – a race-relations allegory... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: NapoléonSunday, 20 November 2016
Like Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Abel Gance's Napoléon is the monument of a genius badly in need of self-editing. In both instances, everything testifies to the singular vision of the artist - in Gance's case, his innovations in the field of... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Quay Brothers - Inner SanctumsTuesday, 01 November 2016
Conveniently released as the nights get darker and the shadows lengthen, Inner Sanctums is a package to give nervous viewers nightmares. Stop-motion animators Stephen and Timothy Quay moved from Philadelphia to London in 1969 after winning... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Pioneers of African-American CinemaTuesday, 25 October 2016
The parallel universe of what was known as “race” cinema gets five packed DVDs here. Instead of cringing with sympathy at small, racistly conceived black roles in a classic Hollywood era which coincided with an American Apartheid, these are indie... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: PsychomaniaFriday, 09 September 2016
Fusing genres to come up with unique takes on familiar tropes can be risky. The unwieldy results may be an unappetising mess. Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, where Arthur Lucan and Bela Lugosi fought for space in an unfunny 1952 fusion of comedy and... Read more... |
