Christopher Machell
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Criterion Review: Lone Wolf and Cub
★★★★☆ Adapted from the long-running successful Manga series, the Lone Wolf and Cub films represent the very best in the chanbara genre. This Criterion set includes all six films, gorgeously remastered, as well as Shogun Assassin, the Americanised re-edit of the first two films that sacrifices narrative and thematic coherence in favour of an eerie…
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Criterion Review: Multiple Maniacs
★★★☆☆ Depravity and bad taste are the watchwords of director John Waters’ unique oeuvre, none more so than his unhinged 1970 effort Multiple Maniacs – even if its shock value is perhaps not as finely sharpened as his bad taste masterpiece Pink Flamingos. Multiple Maniacs’ grimy cinematography, bonkers performances and showstopping turn from regular collaborator…
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DVD Review: Property Is No Longer a Theft
★★★★☆ How is the ownership of one object assigned to one person or another, and what does the nature of ownership say about the owner? In Elio Petri’s hallucinogenic black comedy Property Is No Longer a Theft, Total (Flavio Bucci) is told by his father (Salvo Randone) that theft is far worse than a mere…
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Film Review: Get Out
★★★★☆ Relatively cheap and quick to shoot, horror is often the favoured genre of young directors. Luminaries like Sam Raimi and Steven Spielberg both famously cut their teeth on horror cinema. Few could have predicted, however, that writer-director Jordan Peele – one half of comedy duo Key and Peele – would have turned to the…
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DVD Review: The Creeping Garden
★★★☆☆ A pulsating, amorphous mass that moves of its own volition, it acts with apparent intelligence in its endless quest to find and absorb food. No, this isn’t the plot to 1958 sci-fi horror The Blob, but a description of The Creeping Garden’s fascinating if revolting documentary subject, slime mould. A bizarre group of organisms…
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Film Review: Visaaranai
★★★★☆ Director Vetrimaaran’s third film is first and foremost about a serious and ongoing problem in Indian civic society, but in the current world climate it’s hard not to draw parallels between the events of Visaaranai and global politics. Inspired by real events, the film explores the breakdown of habeas corpus as lived experience. It…
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DVD Review: September
★★★★☆ Woody Allen has always had a knack for portraying the awkward sadness that comes with living. His films excel at capturing phases in people’s lives – the self-conscious romance of young adulthood in Annie Hall, or the elegiac reflection of middle-age in Another Woman. September, an elegant and quietly moving chamber piece, sits somewhere…
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DVD Review: Another Woman
★★★★☆ Luke-warmly received on release, Woody Allen’s Another Woman has rightly gained recognition over the years. This melancholy drama is a tender, complex and affecting character study of a woman caught between middle-age regret and marital resentment. Writing from her apartment, philosophy professor Marion (Gena Rowlands) overhears the psychiatric therapy sessions conducted next door. She…
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Film Review: Mildred Pierce
★★★★★ The classic film noirs – The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep – are not always known for their complex or sympathetic female characters, so often characterised as dissembling sirens or maidenly ideals. Not so with Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce, a pitch dark noir whose eponymous anti-heroine (Joan Crawford) is surely one of the…
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DVD Review: Cul-de-sac
★★★☆☆ It’s difficult to remain objective in assessing the films of Roman Polanski, whose accomplishments in cinema have been rightly overshadowed by the fact that he drugged and raped a child in 1977 before fleeing to Europe, continuing to work in exile. Despite this, Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and The Tenant remain some of the great…
