A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
British Films, French and French-language Films
Stanley Tucci, “Final Portrait” (2017) Best seen as a character study and a superficial investigation into an artist’s creativity and what motivates him, “Final Portrait” is…
British Films, Chinese and Chinese-language Films
Ian Bremner, “Secret History (Season 14, Episode 4: The Great Wall of China – Hidden Story)” (2014) The famous Great Wall of China is rightly one…
Elliott Kew “Treasures Decoded (Season 4, Episode 1:The Real Tower of Babel)” (2017) The Bible story of the construction of the Tower of Babel as a…
Tom Cebula, “Treasures Decoded (Season 4, Episode 8: Garden of Eden)” (2017) Many if not most people in Western society know of the Biblical story of…
Peter Crystal, “Treasures Decoded (Season 4, Episode 6: Shrunken Heads)” (2017) Shrunken human heads are the kind of macabre curio objects, beloved of museums and oddball…
Ben Wheatley, “High-Rise” (2015) British author J G Ballard’s novels and short stories are famous for their perceptive originality on the condition of 20th-century humankind and…
Peter Greenaway, “The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover” (1989) Straight away viewers can tell there’s much more simmering away in this story about a…
British Films, Russian and Soviet Films
John Pilger, “Secret World of the US Election: Julian Assange Talks to John Pilger” (RT.com, October 2016) One famous Australian journalist talking to another famous Australian…
British Films, French and French-language Films
Christian Volckman, “Paris 2054: Renaissance” (2006) A glossy animated style of minimal black-and-white presentation, emphasising detail, mood and atmosphere in a future Paris governed by corporations…
British Films, North American Films
Nicholas Roeg, “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976) For a film with hardly much plot and maybe too much soft-core pornography, “The Man who Fell…