Bleak Britain

Mrs Ross (Edith Evans) lives in a world beset by forces beyond her control in Bryan Forbes' The Whisperers (1967)

The British have a tendency to indulge in miserablism, a characteristic that filmmakers have been turning into powerful dramatic art for decades. Bryan Forbes’ The Whisperers (1967) and Ray Davies’ Return to Waterloo (1984) approach it from very different directions, but both create powerful portraits of people living depressing lives.

Movies in Your Head

One of the “advantages” of having a tedious day job which requires a certain amount of concentration but very little thought is that I can spend my shifts listening to my iPod. I’ve recently been addicted to old-time radio shows – among them The Shadow, Gang Busters, Escape, Inner Sanctum, Nero Wolfe, even an excellent […]

Blasts from the past

Tobe Hooper’s mangled career

King Hu’s Legend of the Mountain (1979)

Cauldron Films, round three

Viewing notes: June 2017 – Arrow Video

>