DVD: Threads (1984)
Twenty eight years after its broadcast, this grimy, grainy, BBC production has yet to be eclipsed as one of the most grueling viewing experiences made for mainstream television…
Category: Blu-ray / DVD Film Review
DVD: The War Game (1965) / Culloden (1964)
Banned by the BBC for over 20 years, The War Game (1965) is an Oscar-winning, short documentary that remains one of the most potent anti-war, anti-nuclear films ever made, but to understand why Peter Watkins’ film was rejected and suppressed, one has to flip back and do a tally of all the horrible things that had occurred within a few years prior to its making: the erection of the Berlin Wall…
The Ravages of Colonialism: Concerning Violence + Grande Hotel
Review of Göran Olsson’s Concerning Violence (2014), which begins its run at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema Friday February 27th.
Film: Concerning Violence (2014)
Using a blend of text, archival audio and film footage, Finnish director Göran Olsson (The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975) adapts words from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) to itemize the consequences and lingering ills of (primarily) European colonialism, and its messy legacy in Africa…
BR: Audrey Rose (1977)
Robert Wise had already proven his flair for slow-burning horror in The Haunting (1963) and procedural sci-fi with The Andromeda Strain (1971), and his background as an editor ensures the strategic shocks really pack an emotional wallop, but he’s essentially building on an already solid core of adult characters forced to watch a child they love be afflicted by awfully traumatic nightmares…
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