Nuts in May. Review by Alan Price. Hard to think of many comedy films set on a campsite. There may be some interesting European cinema out there, but I’ve not come across it. We have to return to 1976 and Mike Leigh’s hilarious TV play Nuts in May all about a camping trip that goes horribly wrong.
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On the Beach. Review by Alan Price. One of the extras on this On the Beach blu ray is Kim Newman outlining apocalyptic cinema. Newman describes On the Beach as the first film to portray a dignified end of the world: people quietly going to their doom as a nuclear war sends radiation their way.
Rocco and his Brothers. Review by Alan Price. The rupture of the family is a persistent theme in Visconti’s films. It has been called disintegration but that sounds a bit too final for me, especially in relation to Rocco and his Brothers.
The Worlds of Lucille Hadzihalilovic. Review by Alan Price. Over a period of 21 years Lucille Hadzihalilovic has produced a highly original body of work. 4 feature films and a handful of shorts that have challenged our view of the relationship between children / adolescents socially controlled by adults.
The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz. Review by Alan Price. The film’s Spanish title Ensayo de un crimen translates as Rehearsal for a Crime and could be viewed as a “rehearsal for a life” which in the case of the life of Archibaldo de la Cruz’s hasn’t achieved very much.
The Cars That Ate Paris. Review by Alan Price. An Australian horror, satirical black comedy containing elements of science fiction and fantasy played out like a thriller, with a Western parody sequence, are the makeup of this quirky seventies film from Peter Weir.
Red Beard. Review by Alan Price, Over many years I have watched Red Beard three times and each time I felt elated and drained by its power. Yet since 1965, two annoying descriptions are hung round its neck: “soap opera” is pitted, as if to ward off sentimentality, with “humanist.” Both terms can be used to damn a work of art.
Extreme Private Eros. Review by Alan Price. The opening scenes of Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 shows Miyuki with her female lover Sugako who cannot verbally express her feelings about their relationship. They live in a small town near a US military base in Okinawa and both work in a bar frequented by black American GIs.
Negatives. Review by Alan Price. Negatives is set in a London antiques shop stuffed with Edwardian clothes and Victorian artefacts which provide a meagre business for its owner Theo (Peter McEnery).
Long Live the Republic! Review by Alan Price. It’s the spring of 1945 in the Moravian village of Nesovice. The defeated German army is retreating as the Russians rapidly advance. Twelve year old Oldrich (Zdenek Lstiburek) runs away from his parents to journey across a war-torn landscape.
Poetry review – HOLLYWOOD OR HOME: Charles Rammelkamp enjoys Kathryn Gray’s excursions into the illusory world of film where the past seems to be preserved even as time moves on for the rest of us.
This handsome box set contains two Jiri Jrnka features The Czech Year (1947) and Old Czech Legends. Both are puppet animated films that reveal the mastery of Jrnka’s art though they are very different.
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, film, film archive • Tags: Alan Price, film