Obsession, desire and bodily functions are explored over three generations of the same bloodline in Hungarian filmmaker György Pálfi’s provocative, challenging and richly imaginative second feature Taxidermia. A once uncertain Slarek revisits the film after a 19 year gap and falls in love with every outrageous element on Radiance’s excellent new Blu-ray.
Independent label Anti-Worlds is back with two new Blu-ray titles for August, 3-disc set Divergent View – The Feature Films of Bertrand Mandico, and Blu-ray & CD Digipak The Haunted Moustache.
recent reviews, articles and blogs
How a young boy might react and see the world if his parents and other authority figures fell under alien control is explored with genuine vision and style by director and production designer William Cameron Menzies in his 1953 genre classic Invaders from Mars. A typically late Slarek takes a walk to the sandpit with the BFI’s recently released UHD.
Peter Weir’s first full-length feature, The Cars That Ate Paris, comes to UHD and Blu-ray from the BFI, both editions also including his 1979 TV movie The Plumber. Review by Gary Couzens.
An assistant district attorney investigating a lethal gun battle in a Palermo office block starts to suspect that the officer handling the case may know more about it than he claims in Confessions of a Police Captain, Damiano Damiani’s riveting, politically charged 1971 crime drama. Slarek weaves between corruption and organised crime on Radiance’s typically excellent new Blu-ray.
Akira Kurosawa’s Red Beard [Akahige] his final film with Toshirō Mifune, comes to Blu-ray from the BFI. Gary Couzens goes to see the doctor.
Orban Wallace’s Our Land unwittingly stirs up rage despite its softly-softly approach to urgent land justice and public access debates. The Right to Roam Campaign or Lord and Lady Muck? Jerry Whyte picks his side and pecks at the puzzles this enthralling, frustrating, thought-provoking but ultimately cautious film presents.
Putting (or not in his case) the ‘sync’ in idiosyncratic, director Mark Jenkin is a filmmaker who still shoots on film with a clockwork camera from the 1950s. His work is unmistakable and unique. Camus celebrates the medium as much as his Rose of Nevada and suggests that Jenkin is cinematically something quite extraordinary.