Following some curiosity about the French actor Jean Paul Belmondo's more commercial films that followed his breakout performance in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 French New Wave classic, "À Bout De Souffle"/"Breathless", led me to check out Criterion Channel and other streamers to see what was on offer. While Criterion didn't include some of his later films, it does include a trio of the films that appeared hard on the heels of Godard's film that established him as a hot property in French cinema. The trio of films in a set that includes the 1960 "Le Doulos", (reviewed here in an earlier post), are ..read more

One of the discoveries of my lockdown viewing was the work of the Japanese director Seijun Suzuki, who could be described as the one-time maverick of Nikkatsu Studios until his firing by the studio in the late 1960's following a series of films that the studio felt were becoming increasingly uncommercial due to their often experimental and surreal nature, even though they were rooted in the then popular genre set in the murky world of the Japanese "Yakuza", such as "Branded To Kill" and "Go To Hell Bastards!!" His firing sent Suzuki into the wilderness and it wasn't until the early 1980's tha ..read more

MUBI Channel currently have a selection of films by the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, who, if you're not familiar with his work, could be described as a Finnish Mike Leigh but with an added good helping of "Baltic Noir" sensibilities. I was certainly aware of the director and his films came highly recommended by another film reviewer, but was I ready for what I imagined to be gritty, urban storytelling with a humanist slant, like 1970's / 80's British TV drama in a "Boys From The Blackstuff" vein and reflecting a country undergoing a post-war slump and economic crisis and eager to embrace ..read more

I first watched Frank Perry's 1968 film "The Swimmer" some time in the late 70's or mid-80's in a TV broadcast and have only a dim memory of it as being about a man, "Ned Merrill" (Burt Lancaster) who decides, rather randomly, to get to his home by swimming across the pools of his neighbours, in the course of which we are witness to a series of vignettes as he interacts with each of them. It felt like a quintessentially American, and specifically Los Angeles, film, since the the idea of everyone having a swimming pool could only have come from an America epitomised by L.A, though in fact, the ..read more

MUBI Channel (UK) is currently hosting a series of less widely known Hong Kong martial arts films, of which one is the luridly titled "Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan" and which originates from the famous Hong Kong Shaw Bros studios, with Runme Shaw acting as producer. I've since seen it billed as the "first Chinese sex film" and indeed there is quite a bit of nudity and implied sexual activity, given the subject matter, but it seems reasonable given the context and plot and is only mildy titillating - if anything, there is a shock element of seeing the rather dubious practices of ..read more

Hajime Sato's 1968 chiller "Goke - The Body Snatcher From Hell" or "Vampire Gokemidoro" must surely be one of the oddest additions to Japanese sci-fi films of the 50's and 60's since it's a bizarre mash-up of science fiction and vampire tropes wrapped up in a plot that might have inspired J.J Abram's "Lost" and a notable scene from John Carpenter's "The Thing". It was not produced by studios more well-known for this type of genre film, such as Toho or Daiei, but "P Productions" which made few theatrical films and focussed more on producing "Anime" and "Tokusatsu" for the television market, a ..read more

Could Jacques Rivette's 1991 film be the best film ever, possibly the *only* film ever on the process of drawing from life?....possibly. I approached the film - currently available on Apple+ TV - with something like trepidation though I'd been wanting to watch it for a while, wondering if it was just an excuse for voyeuristic "posh porn" since it features the very lovely Emmanuelle Béart playing the role of a young woman who is persuaded by her aspiring artist boyfriend to pose naked for an older artist played by Michel Piccoli, whose work he admires, effectively trading her off in order to g ..read more

The long-awaited 4K remaster and restoration of the "Ramayana - The Legend of Prince Rama", animated feature film (135 min), an Indo-Japanese co-production from 1992, gets a rare outing in London at the very centrally located cinema noted for it's varied and adventurous programming - The Prince Charles Cinema off Leicester Square, in close proximity to London's Soho Chinatown, in July and November of 2023. More details can be found on the webpage for the film on The Prince Charles Cinema website with ticket information and screening time. Without elaborating on the plot of the film for those ..read more

I watched this film yesterday evening since it came up on the banner announcing new releases and collections on Criterion Channel as one to watch - a deviation from my usual habit of seeking out classics from the past and following a recommendation from a friend - a French actress - who mentioned a French Moroccan actor that I should look out for during an online life-drawing session with her earlier in the afternoon - however, at the time his name escaped me due to a combination of concentrating on the task of drawing and translation across the internet. It turns out that by sheer coincidenc ..read more

Coming hot on the heels of "The Blob" (1958), an American film notable for being the on-screen debut of future superstar actor Steve McQueen, though it is not immediately apparent since by comparison the plot of "Caltiki - The Immortal Monster" is, to me at least, far more interesting and owes a great deal to pulp science fiction and horror literature by writers like H.P Lovecraft and others. An Italian film production, and equally unusual for that reason since the horror genre had limited appeal compared to the stock in trade "Sword and Sandal" epics like "Hercules" of the producing studio ..read more