Hunkered down in the depths of winter, I spent a lot of December immersed in genre movies from around the world – it’s a dizzying mix of violence, perversion and unexpected cinematic delights.
Wrapping up 2022
Tag: British Television
Brief Notes, December Part One
A few notes about disks from a couple of companies I’ve previously had little experience with – 88 Films and 101 Films, both from the UK – plus three box sets from Arrow.
Revisiting some old favourites
Revisiting some old favourites recently has taken in an eclectic selection ranging from a classic BBC television production to Spanish zombies, New York cops, a Las Vegas heist and an oblique alien invasion.
Summer grab-bag, part four: (almost) all the rest
A quick survey of four dozen disks watched over the summer months.
Unearthing memories: BBC’s Maigret and rural Canadian violence
A couple of things seen long ago have resurfaced on disk, tugging at vague memories: Network’s 11-disk set of all 52 episodes of the BBC’s classic series based on Georges Simenon’s novels about Superintendent Maigret (1960-63), and Brian Damude’s scrappy Canadian thriller Sudden Fury (1975) from Vinegar Syndrome reveal just how flawed my memory is.
Spooky
I can now say from personal experience that watching horror movies a week after having a heart attack (even a relatively minor one) may not be the smartest idea – but I did enjoy these five eerie features.
Michael Apted’s documentary legacy
A look back over the 7 Up series (1963-2019), filmmaker Michael Apted’s remarkable longitudinal documentary series following a diverse group of Britons from the age of seven to sixty-three. Following Apted’s death on January 7, it’s unclear whether the series will continue, but the most recent episode offers a deeply moving summation of the project’s meaning in its subjects’ lives.
Speed reviewing, Nov. 2019
Horror, westerns science fiction, crime, magic, demons, vampires, zombies, witches, a one-legged detective, people trapped in a deadly house, a damsel in distress and a film editor driven mad by cheap exploitation movies …
Intimidated by Art
Two modest documentaries delve into the compulsion to create and the fraught relationship between creator and creation.
British black-and-white fantasies
Two excellent recent Blu-ray releases illuminate different strains of British fantasy. They Came to a City (1944), written by J.B. Priestley and directed by Basil Dearden is a Utopian political fable proposing a new Socialist society for post-war Britain, while Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass and the Pit (1959) spins an epic tale of human evolution and our innate propensity for violence through the story of an ancient spaceship discovered buried beneath London.
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