Historical Film | Cagey Films

Steve McQueen’s Small Axe (2020): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on April 22, 2023April 22, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) loses herself to the music in Steve McQueen's Lovers Rock (2020)

Small Axe (2020), Steve McQueen’s five-part film series for the BBC, corrects a glaring omission in British film and television’s treatment of the post-war history of social and political struggle and change; while the lives of the working class became increasingly visible in the ’60s and ’70s, issues of race remained largely unaddressed until this belated project created something like a parallel history to go alongside the classic work of filmmakers like Ken Loach and Alan Clarke. Criterion’s three-disk Blu-ray set also includes Uprising (2021), McQueen’s powerful three-part documentary (co-directed by James Rogan) about the New Cross fire and the subsequent Brixton Riots, which gives added context to the stories told in Small Axe.

Recent Severin viewing

Posted on March 22, 2023March 22, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Alice Campos (Florinda Bolkan) searches for her own past in Luigi Bazzoni’s Le Orme (Footprints on the Moon [1975])

It’s taken me a while to work through some of the many Severin box sets that have been piling up over the past year – the folk horror set All the Haunts Be Ours, House of Psychotic Women and the latest set of Italian movies Violent Streets: The Umberto Lenzi/Tomas Milian Collection – along with some 4K special editions of movies by Dario Argento and Alex de la Iglesia.

Summer grab-bag, part four: (almost) all the rest

Posted on September 21, 2022December 28, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

A quick survey of four dozen disks watched over the summer months.

Edgar G. Ulmer’s Cossacks in Exile (1938)

Posted on September 17, 2022September 16, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Thanks to the Provincial Archives of Alberta I’ve been able to fill in another small gap in my experience of Edgar G. Ulmer’s eclectic filmography; although scanned from a very ragged print, the Archives’ upload of the Ukrainian-language musical Cossacks in Exile (1938) reveals some interesting connections between the 18th Century history of Ukraine and what’s happening there today.

Alex Cox’s Walker (1987): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on May 11, 2022October 30, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

William Walker (Ed Harris) sees American expansionism as a mission from God in Alex Cox's Walker (1987)

Criterion’s Blu-ray release of Alex Cox’s masterpiece Walker (1987) revives this deconstruction of America’s self-mythologizing at a time when its themes are more pertinent than ever; imperial attacks on domestic and foreign societies driven by a toxic mixture of religious self-righteousness and unfettered capitalist greed have been on the rise for decades and Walker traces the roots back to the mid-19th Century doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

One-Shot Wonders: samurai slaughter and zombies

Posted on May 4, 2022May 4, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Director Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) wants to keep shooting when real zombies attack in Shin'ichiro Ueda's One Cut of the Dead (2017)

When filmmakers attempt to tell a story in a single sustained shot they encounter a number of technical issues because they have to abandon many of the tools developed over the history of cinema. Two recent Japanese movie approach the challenge in very different ways, one (Yuji Shimomura’s Crazy Samurai Musashi [2020]) succumbing to the inherent limitations, the other (Shin’ichiro Ueda’s One Cut of the Dead [2017]) interrogating those limitations with great comic effect.

Avery Crounse’s Eyes of Fire (1983)

Posted on February 12, 2022February 9, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Severin’s All the Haunts Be Ours box set resurrects an interesting independent American feature from the early ’80s, Avery Crounse’s Eyes of Fire (1983) uses folk horror elements as a metaphor for colonialism and the violence inherent in Manifest Destiny.

The martial arts of Joseph Kuo

Posted on January 19, 2022January 18, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Brother Wan (Carter Wong) faces Shaolin Temple's final test in Joseph Kuo's 18 Bronzemen (1976)

Eureka’s Blu-ray box set Cinematic Vengeance gathers together eight movies by Taiwanese director Joseph Kuo in the 1970s, an independent specialist in low-budget martial arts movies. These films are packed with great action scenes; the fight choreography, camerawork and editing are exceptional and, although Kuo throws in occasional bits of broad comedy, the tone is often quite dark, with endings that refuse to offer battered characters any final sense of triumph.

Hammer Vol. 6: Night Shadows from Indicator

Posted on October 20, 2021October 17, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Catherine Lacey appears briefly as wealthy, reclusive murder victim Ella Venable in John Gilling's The Shadow of the Cat (1961)

Indicator’s sixth box set of Hammer movies, Night Shadows, is a bit of a mixed bag, with a silly but entertaining Old Dark House throwback in John Gilling’s The Shadow of the Cat (1961), an overwrought psycho thriller in Freddie Francis’ Nightmare (1964), a historical adventure in Peter Graham Scott’s Captain Clegg (1962), and a pseudo-Gothic horror in Terence Fisher’s The Phantom of the Opera (1962).

Thanksgiving viewing

Posted on October 13, 2021October 12, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

The suspect is Jack Cruz, a Capuchin monkey in David Lynch's What Did Jack Do? (2017)

Thanksgiving weekend brought an excess of eating and drinking (but no turkey!) and three great movies – plus one dud.

Tag: Historical Film