The Man Who Would be King. Review by Alan Price. Both the novella and film of The Man Who Would Be King have been described as a ripping yarn but that expression has lost some of its charm and romance.
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Birdsong. Review by Barbara Lewis. Flanders, one of the most densely populated areas of Europe, is the birthplace of artist David Claerbout, whose reaction to an excess of human frenzy is a quest to redefine time.
Women in Love. Review by Alan Price. What D. H. Lawrence’s and Ken Russell’s Women in Love have in common is a focussed passion. Both artists produced works that are vibrantly alive.
Billy Wilder & Ernst Lubitsch. Review by Alan Price. Without Ernst Lubitsch we wouldn’t have had a sophisticated American film comedy that drew upon a cosmopolitan culture and in particular a vanishing memory of Viennese society. And therefore maybe a different Billy Wilder style.
Throne of Blood. Review by Alan Price. T.S.Eliot rarely went to the cinema. However in 1957 he did see Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and called it his favourite film (though I’ve not been able to trace Eliot’s announcement back to any interview, letter or newspaper article).
Oil Lamps. Review by Alan Price. Dysfunctional marriages are rife in contemporary film dramas yet often don’t shift gear into a high tragic dilemma set against a backcloth of decadence.
Kubrick An Odyssey. Review by Alan Price. Throughout late 1980’s and all of the 1990’s the question that moviegoers often asked was what’s Kubrick up to now? We were aware that Stanley Kubrick took a long time creating a film because of his fastidious micro-managing of every aspect of filmmaking.
Yojimbo – 1961 / Sanjuro 1962 – (Kurosawa). Review by Alan Price. The BFI continue their new 4k Kurosawa restorations with two of his most famous samurai films Yojimbo and Sanjuro. Both feature superb performances by Toshiro Mifune as a ronin (a vagrant samurai drifter).
The Barnabas Kos Case. Review by Alan Price. The Barnabas Kos Case is a subtle and witty satire directed by Peter Solan and adapted from the 1954 short story of Peter Karvas. It is a Slovak oddity still retaining its power to disturb and entertain.
Golem – Piotr Szulkin. Review by Alan Price. Golem is a brave oddity: an out to lunch curiosity that equally attracts and repels. It’s great that Second Run have made it available again.
High and Low and Stray Dog (Kurosawa). Review by Alan Price. Crime films with a tinge of film noir are not the obvious genres that spring to mind when you think of the typical output of Akira Kurosawa.
New York, New York. Review by Alan Price. The bad bits of New York, New York make you cringe. The good bits have you cheering out loud in praise. It’s flawed, meandering, joyful and downbeat and never quite the sum of all its parts.
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, film • Tags: Alan Price, film