Kenneth George Godwin

Crime, class and noir in ’50s British cinema

Posted on August 13, 2025August 10, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Former shipmates Bill Randall (George Baker) and his second-in-command George Hoskins (Richard Attenborough) salvage their old gunboat in Basil Dearden's The Ship That Died of Shame (1955)

Three black-and-white British films reflect social change in the post-war years with varying degrees of success in excellent new 4K restorations. Basil Dearden’s The Gentle Gunman (1952) addresses the history of English oppression in Ireland and the morality of the IRA’s violent resistance, while his The Ship That Died of Shame (1955) uses allegory to approach the instability of the class system. Guy Hamilton’s adaptation of J.B. Priestley’s play An Inspector Calls (1954) also takes an allegorical approach to the injustices of a rigid class system, though here in the years just before World War One when that system had not yet been shaken to its foundations.

Clearing the docket: Summer 2025, part three – Kino Lorber

Posted on August 6, 2025August 5, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

A French hitman (Jean-Louis Trintignant) finds himself hunted in Los Angeles in Jacques Deray's The Outside Man (1972)

Continuing my round-up of recent viewing, here are some brief comments about half-a-dozen Kino Lorber releases which include John Frankenheimer’s final theatrical feature, the bleak heist movie Reindeer Games (2000); one of Bert I. Gordon’s cheap ’70s monster movies, The Food of the Gods (1976); Jacques Deray’s Los Angeles-set French noir The Outside Man (1972); Umberto Lenzi’s Italian Dirty Dozen knock-off Battle of the Commandos (1969); and a pair of two-disk sets of Golden Age poverty row B-movies, Republic Pictures Horror Collection (1944-46) and the Mr. Wong Collection (1938-40) starring Boris Karloff as the Chinese detective investigating crimes in San Francisco.

German genre movies from Masters of Cinema

Posted on July 30, 2025July 30, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Gert Fröbe embodies Lang's Inspector Lohmann in Harald Reinl's The Return of Dr. Mabuse (1961)

Three new box sets from Eureka’s Masters of Cinema gather together an interesting range of genre movies made in East Germany at the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and ’70s. Four colourful sci-fi epics compete with Hollywood’s greater resources in Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA, while a fascination with crime and film noir is on full display in Mabuse Lives!: Dr. Mabuse at CCC 1960-64 and Terror in the Fog: The Wallace Krimi at CCC.

Monsters and noir from Criterion

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

A familiar figure emerges from a volcano in Kazuki Omori's Godzilla vs Biollante (1989)

A classic monster is revived in Kazuki Omori’s Godzilla vs Biollante (1989), while monsters of a more human sort make life hell in a pair of female-centred noirs from 1945, Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce and John M. Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven, all available in excellent Blu-ray editions from Criterion.

Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge (1971): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on July 19, 2025July 18, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Bobbie (Ann-Margret) sinks into depression and addiction in Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge (1971)

Written by Jules Feiffer and directed by Mike Nichols, Carnal Knowledge (1971) was way ahead of its time with its blackly comic dissection of toxic masculinity as it follows two friends from their post-WW2 college years to the end of the ’60s, using and abusing women as social attitudes evolve around them. Newly restored in 4K, Criterion’s release includes extensive supplements to provide historical context and critical evaluation of what remains Nichols’ most perfectly formed movie.

Greg Hanec’s Think at Night (2024)

Posted on July 16, 2025July 15, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Three decades in the making, Winnipeg musician and filmmaker Greg Hanec’s feature Think at Night (1992-2024) is a challenging work which assaults the viewer with aggressively abrasive sounds and images as an embittered man (played by Hanec) who, for some reason, has given up on art, wanders the city at night, encountering acquaintances whose continuing creative practices he takes as a personal affront. The film’s style reflects and embodies the character’s existential state, confused and angry, before resolving in a moment of contemplative calm.

Clearing the docket: Summer 2025, part two

Posted on July 9, 2025July 6, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Uncanny life-like puppet Les Hackel sinks into a nightmare of guilt and violence in Evan Marlowe's Abruptio (2023)

Another eclectic selection of movies I’ve watched in the past few months, ranging from a politically nuanced spaghetti western to spectacular action, lush anime, a big-screen travelogue, various horrors from low to relatively high-budget, a charming coming-of-age comedy, a nightmare with uncanny life-sized puppets, and a rediscovered vérité comedy from the late-’60s.

Clearing the docket: Summer 2025

Posted on July 2, 2025July 2, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton)'s conscience torments him when the prospect of wealth becomes a nightmare in Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan (1998)

Recent acquisitions from Arrow and Radiance cover a range of genres from Japanese B-movie crimes to traditional ghost stories, lingering traces of German fascism, a Poe adaptation filtered through pandemic anxieties, a pair of Italian genre movies, and Sam Raimi’s masterful neo-noir A Simple Plan (1998).

British fringe cinema from the BFI

Posted on June 25, 2025June 21, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

The Volunteer (Mary Woodvine) gradually merges with the island in Mark Jenkin's Enys Men (2022)

Four releases from the BFI offer excellent presentations of a pair of features from the 1970s which didn’t leave much of a mark at the time but are well worth rediscovering – Richard Loncraine’s Flame (1975) and Simon Perry’s Eclipse (1977) – and two recent experimental features – Bait (2019), Enys Men (2022) – by Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin, which provide a hand-crafted glimpse of disruptive social change in a timeless landscape.

Personal landmark: my 1000th post

Posted on June 18, 2025June 17, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Ugolin (Rellys)'s guilt turns into romantic obsession in Marcel Pagnol's Manon des Sources (1952)

It’s hard to believe, but this is my 1000th post since I started writing this blog back in October 2010. Not having missed a single week since that first post – and often posting more than once a week – my writing here has been the most sustained activity I’ve ever undertaken. While there’s no doubt an element of ego involved in putting this much personal opinion out into the world, the blog has served something of a self-therapeutic purpose, providing focus and a personal challenge to off-set the tedium of the federal government clerical job I landed after my editing career dried up. Having retired six months ago, I’m finding myself wondering whether the blog has served its purpose and the time has come to look for other creative pursuits.

Author: Kenneth George Godwin