Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Emil Jannings Director: Josef von Sternberg Rated: PG Distributor: Madman Cinema Sashaying across the screen like a magnificent wild cat, Marlene Dietrich set the benchmark for bawdiness with her breakthrough role as Lola Lola in The Blue Angel. We don’t see her until well into the film but when we do she …
Starring: Lamberto Maggiorani; Enzo Staiola Director: Vittorio De Sica Rated: PG Distributor: Umbrella World cinema DVD The simple bicycle is regularly voted the world’s best invention but nowhere is it more central to survival than in Vittorio De Sica’s heartbreaking film The Bicycle Thief. Adapted from Luigi Bartolini’s novel by De Sica’s long-time screenwriting partner …
Starring: Brahim Haggiag; Jean Martin; Saddi Yacef Director: Gillo Pontecorvo Rated: (15+) Distributor: Madman Cinema In many ways, Gillo Pontecorvo’s Oscar nominated masterpiece The Battle of Algiers plays more like a documentary than a feature film. Tracing the bloody war that was waged in the late ’50s and early 60s between the native Muslims of …
Starring: Jessica Lange, Ed Harris, Ann Wedgeworth, David Clennon Director: Karel Reisz Rated: M Distributor: Universal When I first saw this brilliant biopic back in the mid ’80s I was totally smitten both with the subject, country singer Patsy Kine, and the woman who embodied her, Jessica Lange. Bedecked in a wardrobe of the most …
Starring: George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor Director: F.W. Murnau Rated: G Distributor: Accent Film Entertainment It’s tempting to laugh at the overblown style of acting in most silent films. And those speedy movements that resulted from the old hand cranked cameras often make it appear even more odd. But in the hands of a master like …
Starring: Jack Thompson, Reg Lye, Max Cullen Director: Ken Hannam Rated: M Distributor: Hopscotch Entertainment Australia was built on the sheep’s back. At least, that’s what we were all taught at school. We even sang pseudo national anthems like ‘Click go the shears, boys, click, click, click’- outdated of course as, ever since power was …
Starring: Mel Gibson, Steve Bisley, John Jarrett, Phil Avalon Director: Christopher Fraser Rated: M 15+ Distributor: AV Channel Sometimes B Grade films graduate to the realm of cult either through their association with actors who later went on to become major stars or because they’re simply so bad, they’re good. Summer City fits the former …
Starring: Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake Director: Preston Sturges Rated: PG Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment It takes a certain type of director to transform a sexy vamp into a dowdy tramp within just a few short scenes but Preston Sturges was not your average auteur. In Sullivan’s Travels he cast the sultry blonde Veronica Lake as a …
Starring: John Lurie, Eszter Balint, Richard Edson Director: Jim Jarrmusch Rated: M Distributor: Madman If you thought that Broken Flowers was full of scenes where nothing really happened, then you should check out Jim Jarmusch’s debut feature Stranger Than Paradise. Hardly anything at all takes place, and yet it’s so gorgeous to look at, it …
Starring: Buster Keaton, Ernest Torrence, Marion Byron Director: Charles F Reisner and Buster Keaton (uncredited) Rated: G Distributor: The AV Channel On a day when everyone’s singing ‘Silent Night’, it’s probably best to take heed and watch a silent movie, although the laughs that are assured with a viewing of Steamboat Bill Jr. just might …
Starring: Jo Kennedy, Ross O’Donovan Director: Gillian Armstrong Rated: PG Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment (Oz Classics) Starstruck is generally considered to be Australia’s first screen musical but director Gillian Armstrong now reveals that two weeks before recording the soundtrack, the filmmakers discovered that they had no songs. All the tracks submitted for selection were, to put …
Starring: Aleksandr Kajdanovsky, Anatoli Solonitsyn, Nicolai Grinko Director: Andrei Tarkovsky Rated: PG Distributor: Shock (Distinction Series) Set in an eerie post Apocalyptic, pre-Chernobyl landscape, Andrei Tarkovsyky’s cult classic provides a picturesque and ponderous contemplation on the meaning of life that taps nicely into the current debate surrounding religion and faith. Seeking out a fabled room …
Director Hayao Miyazaki Rated: PG Distributor: Madman DVD Just like one of the magicians in his animated features, director Hayao Miyazaki plucked the spirit for the leading character in his breakthrough feature from that of the daughter of an old friend. The ten year old was displaying all the usual signs of unrest and sullenness …
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons, Laurence Olivier, Tony Curtis Director: Stanley Kubrick Rated: MA Distributor: Universal How hilarious is Hollywood, especially in hindsight? Spartacus, for instance, that 1960 mega sword and sandal feast directed by Stanley Kubrick takes as its basis the slave revolt in Republican Rome and turns it into an oiled-up romp with …
Starring: Mitzi Gaynor, Rossano Brazzi, John Kerr Director: Joshua Logan Rated: G Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment With the winter solstice now behind us, the days are getting incrementally longer but it’ll be some time yet before they really start to heat up. So if you’re itching for a taste of the tropics, this …
Starring: Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, Valerie Perrine Director: George Roy Hill Rated: M Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment An ageing American named Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) is typing a letter to the editor of the Ilium Daily News explaining how he has become “unstuck in time”. He jumps back and forth from his memories as a prisoner …
Starring: Stockard Channing, Will Smith, Donald Sutherland Director: Fred Schepsi Rated: M 15+ Distributor: MGM DVD When a film title cements itself in contemporary vernacular, it rises above the pack simply by virtue of being constantly articulated. Like Catch-22 before it, Six Degrees of Separation has earned that peculiar distinction. You often hear people talk …
Starring; Elizabeth Berkley, Gina Gershon, Kyle MacLachlan Director: Paul Verhoven Rated: R Distributor: Roadshow Entertainment Las Vegas has to rank as one of the most gaudy, vacuous, superficial places on Earth and any movie set there would amount to nothing if it didn’t at least attempt to capture this peculiar quality. Director Paul Verhoven’s Showgirls …
Stars: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant, Jack Warden, Carrie Fisher Dir: Hal Ashby Rated: PG Distributor: Columbia Pictures Wearing cute little baby-doll frocks that barely cover her bum, Goldie Hawn flashes her knickers and bats her blue eyes all over the screen in the frothy 1975 flick Shampoo. Her character, Jill is …
Starring: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn Director: Gordon Parks Rated: MA Distributor: Warner Brothers “Who’s the black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks? Shaft.” The fabulous Oscar winning theme song by Isaac Hayes is perfectly in synch with Urs Furrer’s camera as it zooms in from a rooftop on 42nd Street …
Stars: Toshiro Mifune, Takeshi Shimura Dir: Akira Kurosawa Rated: PG Distributor: Eastern Eye Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is an action packed epic spooling in at three hours and twenty-seven minutes and remarkably every black and white scene has something to keep the viewer hooked, be it the intense, often noble acting, the fabulous costumes or …
Starring: Shafiq Syed, Hansa Vithal, Aneeta Kanwar Director: Mira Nair Rated: M Distributor: Hopscotch Beneath the glitter and gloss of Bollywood, there’s a very different reality being played out on the streets of India’s movie making capital. Director Mira Nair was one of the first to expose this harsh and often cruel world in her …
Starring: Ben Gazzara, Denholm Elliot Director: Peter Bogdanovich Rated: M 15+ Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment In the dying days of the Vietnam War, Singapore was a city in change. There were still traces of British colonialism – you could pretend you were Sommerset Maugham and get a Singapore Sling in the Palm Court of the Raffles …
Starring: Julianne Moore Director: Todd Haynes Rated: M (15+) Distributor: Madman Cinema A couple of months after first watching Safe and images keep resurfacing in my mind; Julianne Moore as the hypersensitive home-maker Carol White admiring her newly permed hair when suddenly her nose starts to bleed; then later, hyperventilating at a cloying baby shower …
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden Director: Billy Wilder Rated: PG Distributor: Paramount Golden Classics It’s a scientific fact that Audrey Hepburn graced every film that she was in with a unique angelic quality. Well… maybe it hasn’t been proven in a laboratory but her natural enthusiasm and unbridled inner glow seems to add …