All alone in bedsit land – Gareth Tunley’s The Ghoul reviewed

Full disclosure, I’ve known The Ghoul’s writer/director Gareth Tunley since the mid-nineties, even shared a flat together in Walthamstow. So approaching his feature debut dispassionately is not really happening.

I first saw the film a year ago before its successful festival run (The Ghoul played the London Film Festival and Mayhem in Nottingham among others), and the first thing that hit me was an overwhelming wave of relief that I didn’t have to look shifty and tell Big Daddy G ‘the cinematography is nice’ before suddenly remembering I had a bus to catch.

I had intended not to write the film up, figuring it as a conflict of interest (like the big I am that I am) and as others have done a sterling job of doing so (including such genre critics as Anton Bitel and Kim Newman in Empire Magazine.

But as The Ghoul is about to be released on the 4th August in the UK by Arrow Releasing on a limited theatrical run with a DVD and Blu Ray release following on 4th September, and as this is my blog and I’m beholden to nobody… fuck it, here’s a review of Gareth Tunley’s The Ghoul.

Event preview – Bristol’s Cinema Rediscovered weekender (27 – 30 July 2017)

I’ve recently relocated to Bristol and have found a city with vibrant film culture into which I’m currently dipping my toes. Here follows a preview of the upcoming Cinema Rediscovered festival running at the end of July. If you live in, or around Bristol there are some great screenings and events. Here is my pick…

Favorite films – Pride (2014)

Shown this Christmas on BBC2, 2014’s Pride was my favourite film of that year and hopefully will find a wider audience on its terrestrial television premiere.

This is an article I wrote about the film (with a few minor edits) for the late and much lamented movie magazine Verite.

I, Daniel Blake is a film of devastating emotional impact

You very much know what you are going to get from Ken Loach. He rarely works in genre, unless you consider the Loach picture a genre in itself (the case can be made). Since making Kathy Come Home for the BBC’s Wednesday Play strand in 1966 Loach has spent the ensuing 50 years making socially conscious, usually contemporary dramas with socialist themes. His films take place in working class milieus, and he finds warmth and humour even in the grimmest of subjects.

ONE CHANCE – The unlikely film behind a $4.8 million lawsuit

Director David Frankel is currently suing The Weinstein Company for $4.8 million dollars for fraud over the 2014 US release of his film One Chance. Some directors when faced with a flop and a raft of middling-at-best reviews would see this as a blip on the resume and move on. Frankel however is claiming that The Weinstein Company had promised to release the film on 800 US screens or pay $5 million in damages to Frankel and the film’s producers. In the event TWC released the film on 43 US screens to hit a heady opening US weekend take of $33,405 with a screen average of $777 (figures from http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=onechance.htm). So what about the film behind the story, can it be worth the fuss? I probably don’t need to tell you the answer, but here is my review from 2014 anyway.

Talk about, pop music – Sing Street review

While UK multiplexes again shake to the sub woofer rumble of another CGI heavy comic book biffathon, the film you should really see is deliriously delightful Irish coming-of-age comedy drama Sing Street. Here’s why…

Review – Our Kind of Traitor

You can find my review of John le Carré adaptation Our Kind of Traitor (out now in the UK) on the Dead Good Books site at http://www.deadgoodbooks.co.uk/review-our-kind-of-traitor/

Sensitive and affecting, Lilting is worth discovering

Lilting, which played at Sundance and opened the BFI Flare LGBT film festival in 2014, is precisely the sort of small-scale drama that often slips below people’s radar on release. Now available via the BFI Player and screening on BBC Two on the 1st of April at 11:05 this is a great opportunity to get acquainted with Hong Khaou’s debut film.

Brooklyn is a wonderful immigrant story

This review was originally published on the new apparently defunct Grolsch film site. 

School daze? The Falling review

Writer/director Carol Morley’s film The Falling was one of my favourites from last year’s London Film Festival. Newly released on DVD/Blu Ray, it’s time to fall for one of the year’s most beguiling movie treasures.