Strongroom. Review by Alan Price. With the BFI’s Strongroom and its extra film The Man in the Back Seat we have two powerful examples of terrifically tight story telling. Three crooks rob the strongroom of an airtight vault and lock the manager and his secretary inside. But it’s a bank holiday weekend and being there for three days means they will suffocate.
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The films of Frederick Wiseman. Review by Alan Price. Why has it taken me so long to get round to watching the films of Frederick Wiseman? Well that’s because of their physical media inaccessibility and rare screenings in the cinema (those enticing clips on YouTube were never enough).
The Driver’s Seat. Review by Alan Price. On its release in 1974 “The Driver’s Seat” did badly commercially and critically. Today it will probably fascinate, engage, repel, disturb, disarm and draw you into its own world.
Twilight. Reviewed by Alan Price. Images of uncompromising nature, in the form of the forests, mountains and plains, surrounding the ex-mining village Ronabanya in northern Hungary, begin and end the extraordinary Twilight.
La Regle Du Jeu (Jean Renoir) 1939 – BFI Blu Ray 2023. Review by Alan Price. Since 1952 Renoir’s La Regle Du Jeu has stood high in Sight and Sound’s poll of the greatest films of all time.
Enys Men. Review by Alan Price. I doubt if 2023 will see a more visually beautiful British film than Enys Men. It’s a remarkable advance on Bait and confirms Jenkins to be a powerful poetic filmmaker.
Hands Up / Identification Marks: None. Review by Alan Price. Here’s an artist constantly on the move: hitting out with anger, wit and veiled compassion. I savour David Thomson’s summing up of this Polish maverick. “Skolimowski is a director who stalks us like a fighter with stunning blows in either hand.”
EO. Directed by Jerzy Skolomowski. Review by Alan Price. EO is the story of the tribulations of a Sardinian donkey: very attractively grey with white spots round its melancholic eyes.
Carrie by William Wyler. Review by Alan Price. Carrie, William Wyler’s 1950 adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s 1900 novel Sister Carrie, has been out of full circulation for some years now: hard to see on TV and only available as a cut DVD until Imprint’s restored Blu-Ray release.
The Cassandra Cat. Review by Alan Price. There have been many quirky films about cats but I can’t recall a film quite like The Cassandra Cat. The Cassandra Cat is a very different film to Vojtech Jasny’s later masterpiece All My Good Countrymen (1969) but nonetheless an endearing gem.
The Films of Ingmar Bergman Vol 4. Review by Alan Price. And so we arrive at the 4th BFI Box set of Bergman films. This covers his final films for the cinema and some TV work from 1972 until 1984.
Knights of the Teutonic Order 1960. Review by Alan Price. The 1960 Knights of the Teutonic Order was a vividly patriotic and optimistic statement for the Poles who, a decade before, had sat through some bleak screen depictions of their struggles during the Second World War. The cruel knights can be seen as proto-Nazis against which Polish nationalism triumphs. And in 2000 it was the most popular film ever screened in Poland and abroad.
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, film • Tags: Alan Price, film