Two new BFI releases, Peter Hall’s Akenfield (1974) and Andrew Grieve’s On the Black Hill (1988), view the 20th Century through the relationships of people in rural Britain to the land, evoking physical hardship and timeless mystical connections.
Two excellent recent Blu-ray releases from the BFI illuminate the extremes of high and low art in British film of the early 1970s. Ken Russell’s version of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love is exemplary literary adaptation, while Don Sharp’s Psychomania is … well, something else again!
Despite truly dismal digital projection a recent big-screen viewing of The Birds reconfirms its status as one of Hitchcock’s finest films, and one of the best disaster films ever made.
Criterion releases some high-end trash with an extras-packed edition of Valley of the Dolls, and a collection of journalistic reviews by Graham Greene offers interesting insights into movies in the ’30s.
Some fairly random thoughts on an old TV show, a couple of violent satires, and large-A Acting in the films of Bennett Miller.
Revisiting old favourites like the original Star Trek series and familiar genres from samurai sword fights to supernatural monsters is like eating comfort food, triggering familiar emotions; even Satanic horrors can be paradoxically soothing.
I’ve recently been dipping into the ’60s and ’70s with two Criterion Blu-rays of major works by Orson Welles, a couple of Robert Altman’s signature titles, and a new J.G. Ballard adaptation from Ben Wheatley.
Some movies are so odd it’s hard to see how they came to be made … like Laslo Benedek’s brooding thriller The Night Visitor (1971) with its pulpy plot and cast of major international stars.
Brief thoughts on some genre movies released on Blu-ray by Arrow Video, plus a couple of interesting books about the making of Cy Endfield’s Zulu and Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.
Sex runs through the history of the movies as both spectacle and disrupter of narrative; Russ Meyer reveled in it, while Charlie Kaufman finds in sex poignant emotional depths.