Category Archive: Classic Film
Accident
(dir. Joseph Losey) (1967) Harold Pinter scripted from the novel by Nicholas Mosley: Dirk Bogarde covets his pupil’s girlfriend but lacks the courage to close in. Meanwhile his academic pal is already on the case. Everyone deserves censure and they know it. Moody, slow, richly complex, misanthropic and not-to-be-missed.
Continue Reading →Withnail & I
(dir. B. Robinson) (1985) Perfect homage to the strange death of swinging London. Withnail, I and Uncle Monty et al emblematize La Bruyere’s epigram that self-indulgence and severity towards others is the same vice. Looking up from our slim volume of Nigel’s poems, its pages stained with buttery tears from crumpets, we see the sky is beginning to bruise…home lads! To Vim under the sink and one bar on. (Look for more killer (and accurate) quotes from the film here). [See “Vivian & I” by Colin Bacon (2010, Quartet Books) for Withnail’s prototype, Vivian Mackerrell. Vivian & I available at Amazon.com]…
Continue Reading →The Young Poisoner’s Handbook
(dir. Ben Ross) (1995) 1950s Britain never looked so dystopian and between his grotesque family and idiot prison psychiatrists, you find yourself wanting young Graham to keep getting away with it. Of course, with silly, smug, progressive psychiatrists like Dr Ziegler to let him loose and call him cured, he’s a shoe-in!
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