Barnaby Walter reviews the BFI’s new collection of classic Christmas Ghost Stories
Jack Harding explains his love for this weird, brilliant film.
If you’ve seen some of the awful DVD editions of this film you probably think it doesn’t deserve a Blu-ray release. It certainly does.
This Alfred Hitchcock movie is a fascinating Second World War drama. It is entirely set on a lifeboat (hence the title), with the characters survivors of a torpedoed liner. The suspense comes from the characters suspecting a rescued Nazi of leading them on the wrong course as they try to sail their boat to land, and…
Life is hopeslesly tangled with fiction in this highly original offering from In Bruges director Martin McDonagh. Billed as a British crime comedy but more an exercise in self-referential meta-fiction, Seven Psychopaths follows Marty (Colin Farrell), a scriptwriter struggling to pen his big hit, a film of the same name. The ridiculous dognapping escapades of…
Some have described Weekend as the British answer to Before Sunrise, and to some extent they are right. This is a talky romance set over, yes, a weekend, where a one night stand turns into something resembling love. The strength of the film lies in the honesty of the performances by lead actors Tom Cullen…
Before I saw the film, friends had told me that Yann Martel’s novel, The Life of Pi, was unadaptable; that the plot just couldn’t be translated from book to movie. Yet Ang Lee took on the challenge, and against all odds it was a box office success. The plot centers around Pi a boy who…
This was a film ahead of its time. It contains radical decisions in filmmaking and the story pushes aside the attitudes towards controversial topics of the time. Orson Welles contributed many things to the history of cinema, but this film is perhaps his potent contribution to the future of it. Beautifully presented in multiple editions in various…
Some argue that this is the perfect romantic film. If it isn’t, it certainly comes close. The story about a bar owner in Casablanca during World War II who comes face to face again with a lost love from the past has rightfully earned its place in people’s hearts. This simply divine Blu-ray steelbook has…
Grace and David travel to the country to visit their friends, brother and sister Marianne and Alex. They have known each other for a while and are staying over at one of the siblings’ house. Over the dinner, the conversation turns political. The social attitudes and issues of the day are raised, occasionally resulting in…
Paedophobic cinema has become a fairly classic staple of the horror genre. The Omen, The Exorcist and The Shining have all helped cultivate, or perhaps manipulate, our very potent fear of witnessing something so innocent display traces of evil. To some extent We Needto Talk About Kevin, directed by Lynne Ramsay and based on the novel by Lionel Shriver, is a horror story. First and foremost however, it…
The Edge unveil’s this year’s festive countdown: a celebration of the high definition Blu-ray format, featuring the 100 discs you must put on your Christmas list.
I’ve never been particularly impressed with Audrey Tautou and this suffocating and miserable French drama hasn’t exactly changed my opinion of her. The film is an adaptation of François Mauriac’s popular 1927 novel (which I must confess I have not read) and tells the story of a woman who marries for convenience and money, joining…
This teen movie from the 80s is given a welcome release on Blu-ray by cult distributors Arrow Video