Category Archive: FILM
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(dir. M Nicholls) (1966) Fortify yourself before attending a party at George and Mildreds’. More Albee-inspired drink and depravity with great overheated performances (a big tick in particular for Sandy Dennis).
Continue Reading →Atlantic City
Image by Bordercolliez
(directed by Louis Malle) (1981) Atlantic City, a style-free Las Vegas with saltwater, is the perfect place for Malle to probe America’s dark corners, with Burt Lancaster (a small time chiseller and errand-boy, seeking an emotional resurgence) and Susan Sarandon (a cocktail waitress down on her luck) playing a great pair of losers. How something so seedy can bloom so sweetly is a tribute to the entire cast and crew.
Continue Reading →The Wages of Fear
(Le Salaire de la Peur) (dir. H.G. Clouzot) (1953) Four men volunteer to drive 2 trucks bearing high explosive over rough terrain to help douse an oil fire. It’s a suicide mission but better than remaining stranded in their no-horse town. Real people and real action, gloriously French and politically incorrect.
Continue Reading →Vertigo
(dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (1958) Hitch’s greatest, weirdest film melds his various obsessions: food, drink, shopping, murder, sightseeing and icy, vacant blondes.
Continue Reading →The Vanishing
(dir. George Sluizer) (1988) A Dutch couple on their summer holidays fight, then make-up. She goes to get some things from the service station shop and that’s it – gone girl. From there, we work backwards, into the dark canals of human activity. Forget the 1993 remake; this French/Dutch original version is brilliant – funny, creepy; one of the best studies of men compelled to plumb life’s mysteries, with fatal results.
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