Kenneth George Godwin

Tery Gilliam’s Brazil (1985): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on June 11, 2025June 10, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Office drone Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) has heroic fantasies in Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985)

Criterion’s new edition of Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece Brazil (1985) presents an impressive new 4K restoration which highlights the dense, endlessly inventive production design of Gilliam’s blackly comic dystopian vision of a world run by an oppressive but utterly incompetent bureaucracy, even more pertinent now than it was in the middle of Reagan’s presidency. The three-disk, dual-format set includes a comprehensive history of the production and the controversy surrounding Gilliam’s fight to get the film released, as well as the truly awful alternate “Love Conquers All” cut put together by Universal in a misguided attempt to make the film “more commercial”.

Theatrical viewing, early 2025

Posted on June 4, 2025June 1, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Paddington leads the Brown family on an adventure in Dougal Wilson's Paddington in Peru (2024)

One of the benefits of retirement is being able to go to weekday matinees, which means seeing movies in almost empty theatres – the best way as far as I’m concerned. So this year I’ve already seen more movies than all of last year or the year before . But that also means I’ve seen a few movies I probably wouldn’t have bothered with before. Among the duds, though, have been some good – or at least interesting – movies I’m glad I saw on a big screen.

British archive television from Network

Posted on May 31, 2025June 1, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Colonel Waley (Alfred Burke) enforces conservative traditions in the exclusive Hunters Club in Nigel Kneale's Ladies' Night (Herbert Wise, 1986)

A pair of DVDs from the now-defunct Network Releasing unearth forgotten artefacts from British television history; The Frighteners, an anthology of concise half-hour psychological thrillers from 1972-73, and three one-hour dramas displaying the range of the influential writer Nigel Kneale – The Crunch (Michael Elliott, 1964), a political thrillers, Ladies’ Night (Herbert Wise, 1986), a satirical comedy about a conservative establishment crumbling in the face of feminism, and Gentry (Roy Battersby, 1987), in which a bourgeois couple cashing in the decline of an East End community are confronted by the anger of those being displaced.

The mind-bending paradox of Nacho Vigalondo’s Timecrimes (2007)

Posted on May 28, 2025May 28, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

The identity of the menacing man in the woods comes as a surprise in Nacho Vigalondo's Timecrimes (2007)

Nacho Vigalondo’s Timecrimes (2007) is one of the best – and most mind-bending – time travel paradox movies, a rigorous, darkly comic puzzle in which cause and effect are twisted in knots as a middle-class man finds his identity fragmented by repeated short jumps in time.

The destructive power of fragile masculinity: Terence Fisher’s Four Sided Triangle (1953)

Posted on May 21, 2025May 17, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Bill (Stephen Murray) is so tightly focused on his research that he becomes blind to consequences in Terence Fisher's Four Sided Triangle (1953)

In 1953 Hammer Films took the first step on a path which would soon give the company an international reputation as a key purveyor of horror movies. Terence Fisher’s Four Sided Triangle, a modest production which combined science fiction, psychological horror and romantic melodrama in a prosaic English village setting laid the groundwork which would lead two year later to Val Guest’s The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), and two more years beyond that to Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), the movie which changed the course of modern horror cinema. Hammer’s 4K restoration of Four Sided Triangle will hopefully dispel the film’s rather low reputation, with a beautiful new transfer, two commentaries and three interview featurettes which argue for its value as a pioneering contribution to British genre cinema.

David Cronenberg contemplates mortality in The Shrouds (2025)

Posted on May 17, 2025May 16, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Karsh Relikh (Vincent Cassel) begins to doubt the technology he has helped to develop in David Cronenberg's The Shrouds (2024)

In his latest film, The Shrouds (2024), David Cronenberg has made his most personal work since The Brood (1979), transforming grief into a meditation of mortality which, while at times uncomfortably revelatory, is nonetheless shot through with a dark vein of humour.

Richard Lester’s Musketeers (1973-74): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on May 14, 2025May 13, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

D'Artagnan (Michael York) prepares to duel Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay) and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain) in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers (1973)

After his radical influence on film comedy in the 1960s, with movies like A Hard Day’s Night (1964), The Knack … and How to Get It (1965) and How I Won the War (1967), Richard Lester remade himself as a skilful creator of mainstream entertainments in the 1970s, beginning with The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974). The mix of history, politics and violence is in constant tension with irreverent comedy and slapstick, while the large cast epitomizes the ’70s attraction to big-name ensembles. Criterion’s new two-disk set – available in both 4K UHD and Blu-ray – has been mastered from a gorgeous restoration by StudioCanal, supported by more than three hours of extras which detail the unconventional production.

Discovering a Japanese master: Tai Katô

Posted on May 7, 2025May 6, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Former soldier Kawada (Noboru Andô) defies the law and his former comrades to help his community in Tai Katô’s Eighteen Years in Prison (1967)

Despite a career spanning from the 1930s to the mid-’80s, I hadn’t even heard of Tai Katô until a recent flurry of disk releases from Radiance in England and Film Movement in the States, yet he produced significant work in some of my favourite genres – particularly chambara and yakuza films, both of which are represented in these releases, with excellent editions of postwar crime stories (By a Man’s Face Shall You Know Him [1966] and Eighteen Years in Prison [1967]), police procedural noir (I, the Executioner [1968]), and period swordfighting (Tokijiro: Lone Yakuza [1966]).

Horrors old and new

Posted on April 30, 2025April 24, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Kronos (Horst Janson) uses his modified sword to deflect the vampire's hypnotic gaze in Brian Clemens' Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)

Horror is a flexible genre, capable of using science fiction, history, adventure, action and terrible real-life events to touch on existential questions as well as provide escape with a frisson of pleasurable fear. Three recent releases span a broad range of the possibilities – Roger Corman’s X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963), arguably his best film; Brian Clemens’ Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974), one of the best late films from Hammer Films; and Nick Kozakis’s Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism (2023), a bleak examination of the dangers of fundamentalist religious beliefs based on a tragic case which occurred in Australia in 1993.

Late winter/early spring Arrow viewing, part two

Posted on April 23, 2025April 22, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Dr. Ellis (Richard Dysart) inserts electrodes into Harry Benson (George Segal)'s brain in Mike Hodges' The Terminal Man (1974)

Some recent Arrow releases provide an opportunity to revisit a few familiar movies and – perhaps – reevaluate them. Each of them presents some problems, but Tarsem Singh’s The Cell (2000), Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects (1995) and Mike Hodges’ The Terminal Man (1974) were all worth another look.

Author: Kenneth George Godwin