On the face of it, there’s nothing much to it. The run time is under half an hour, the animation is shoddy, and the voice actors mostly inexperienced. The plot is rudimentary at best. And yet … there’s something about Charlie Brown and his friends that appeals to people all over the world. They inhabit…
This film was released in 1950, and directed by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Ostensibly a murder mystery, it relates the tale of a samurai who has been found dead, his wife raped, and the enquiry into how this happened. The whole story is told in flashback. The framing device is that of three…
Take cold war fears of nuclear annihilation, and add in an intelligent super-computer gone amuk, and you have ”Colossus: The Forbin Project”. This was certainly not the first time a computer taking over had been depicted on film – both “2001 A Space Odyssey” and “Alphaville” predate this, for example. The idea also appeared in…
“Exterminating Angel” was directed by the Spanish Surrealist Luis Bunuel, but is a Mexican production as he was living there at this time. It’s about a group of rich people who gather together for a dinner, only to discover that for reasons unknown they can’t leave. Surrealism, whether it is in art, literature, or film,…
I do like a ghost story, and I am also a fan of director Guillermo Del Toro, so I was interested to see “Crimson Peak”. Starring Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain, it’s a gothic horror in the old style used by Hammer horror films of the fifties, sixties and seventies. A young American…
“Fantasia” is my idea of comfort watching. I’ll re-watch it when I’m feeling especially down or stressed, because it makes me smile, cheers me up. there’s so much in there – humour, drama, beauty, spookiness, beautiful music and beautiful animation. “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” by Johann C Bach, was the piece for the…
Have you ever worked in an office? Then Office Space is a film about your life. The technology may be twenty years out of date, cubicles may be replaced with open plan offices (personally I’d rather have a cubicle), but still you will know these people and these situations. Our hero is Peter, played by…
“Annihilation” is a science fiction film that was released in 2018. It’s about a mysterious phenomenon referred to as the ‘shimmer’, and an expedition comprised of five scientists that enter it to investigate. They are the latest in a long line of teams that have been sent in and not returned. There has been one…
This is a weirdly compelling low budget film which is kind of science fiction, kind of horror (a bit), kind of supernatural. This 2017 film starred and was directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Two brothers are living a hand to mouth existence after having escaped from a cult some years earlier. The younger…
“Mississippi Burning”, made in 1988, is based on real events that occurred in 1964. It depicts the way racism divides and destroys community. In 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi after they tried to help the local African American community enrol to vote. Two agents of the FBI (played by Willem Dafoe…
Eclectic Assemblage 