This is a vampire film which treats vampirism as a very direct metaphor for drug addiction, to such a degree that it quite often reminded me of Requiem for a Dream (2000). It sets itself up as challenging and intellectually-driven early on, opening with footage of American atrocities committed in Vietnam combined with a voice-over musing over ( Read more... )

As this is a recent release still screening in some places, I will cut the bulk of this review. That's not to say it's a film that would seriously be ruined by knowing a bit about what happens in it, though. In fact, once the major parameters are established, it proceeds with dreadful inevitability towards its end-point, and that's a lot of how it ( Read more... )

Since the two books I read before this one had been awful and disappointing respectively, I turned to this one for a reasonably-guaranteed good read. That's the advantage of literary classics - people are likely to have kept reading and recommending them for a reason, so you're on safer ground than with something new and untried. This one was lent ( Read more... )

I saw both of these with ms_siobhan as a New Year's Eve double-bill at the Hyde Park Picture House yesterday, from our favourite seats on the left-hand side of the balcony.

45. Some Like It Hot (1959), dir. Billy WilderFirst of all, it does have to be acknowledged that this one particular film probably bears about 90% of the responsibility for the ( Read more... )

I'm rather behind with my Who write-ups, for fairly obvious reasons. I've been needing to watch quite a lot of Who recently, but haven't felt entirely up to writing about it, so that I currently have a back-log of five watched-but-unwritten stories, and have started on a sixth. I'm now starting on the catching-up process before it gets too ( Read more... )

I've just been out to see the above with nigelmouse, at a fabulous cinema called the Hyde Park. Leeds City Council inform me that it was originally built as a hotel in 1908, but became a cinema in 1914, and has been one ever since. It's a real treasure, and I could quite understand why nigelmouse said he often goes there as much for the cinema as for the films ( Read more... )