Recurring Hitchcock – where do I begin?

He’s been dead nearly thirty years now, but the man who practically invented the psychological thriller, conceived and delivered our very idea of filmic suspense, and took horror from 50’s b-grade kitsch into the realm of true terror continues to haunt the psyches of young directors hoping to emulate the master. It seems everyone from

Sauna

High-brow Finnish horror washes all your sins away

Three from Luis Buñuel

Un Chien Andalou put both Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel on the map with its opening scene of a young woman passively submitting as her eyeball is sliced open with a razor. An eye-opener even today, in 1929 it was positively shocking – resulting in the movie running in theatres for nearly a year. One

Silent Hitchcock… Shhh…

Two silents from the Master of Suspense…

Mister Lonely

Somewhere in Paris there is a very lonely Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) who doesn’t speak the language well, looking for his big break. His agent believes in him, but he learns to believe in his Michael Jackson self when he meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton). She lures him to Scotland where she

Shine a Light

Forty-five years into their career, the Rolling Stones team up with Martin Scorsese, Jeff White, Christina Aguilera, Buddy Guy, 18 of the finest cameramen in the business and a couple thousand of the luckiest ticket-holders in the world for two nights in New York’s wonderfully intimate Beacon Theatre. With President Clinton ‘opening’ the show, the

Happy Go Lucky

Mike Leigh’s last outing was the relentless depressing and despairing Vera Drake (2005). With Happy-Go-Lucky he pulls a 180 and introduces us to the deliriously optimistic Poppy Cross (Sally Hawkins) whose first thought at discovering her beloved bicycle has been stolen is, “I didn’t even get to say good-bye!” Without her wheels, Poppy accepts that

Doomsday

Director: Neil Marshall Any minute now, the deadly ‘Reaper’ virus will strike Glasgow. London will respond by rebuilding Hadrian’s wall, abandoning Scotland it to its fate. Few will escape. Life will go on… …Until the Reaper mysteriously resurfaces in London in 27 years. A team of crack military scientists, headed up by uber-fit Eden Sinclair

Lust, Caution

Ang Lee is one of the few directors who can tackle virtually any genre, and with a few exceptions (2003’s The Hulk leaps to mind) come up with something marvellous if not exceptional (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000,  Brokeback Mountain, 2005). Lust, Caution is a slow-burning thriller set in WWII Japanese-occupied Shanghai and Hong Kong.

An Angel at My Table

Jane Campion’s delicate, almost leisurely construction of Kiwi Janet Frame’s autobiographies is one of those rare films that draw you completely into its world, so while watching you lose all sense of time and place. Frame’s life unfolds at so naturally, you may not notice the overlap of the three actresses (Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson,