It was the autumn of 1996. The rust-crowned sycamores and horse chestnuts of Thornton-in-Craven were bathed in a thick morning mist. A light frost kissed the windowpanes of the old houses and bungalows, and the sheep of the surrounding farmland shuffled invisibly about the damp, sloping fields. Behind the woods to the north of the
Did you know that John Hurt made an interactive erotic thriller called Tender Loving Care 22 years ago? It was a movie about a worried husband who hires a beautiful psychiatrist to nurse his delusional wife and help her deal with the death of their child in a car accident. No? Well, I wouldn’t blame
The sunflowers were blooming somewhere far away and Belen sat in Tacos Mexico fantasizing about quitting her job. Again. Angel was in the bathroom. They were waiting for their food. Outside it sprinkled and someone was talking about dust storms. They were far from LA. Ok. Not too far. Maybe two hours. But the mountains
In the darkness, your hands outstretched before you, you are falling through eternity. Focus. Deep breath and hold. Release. Focus. You are perfectly alone and alone is perfect. The comforting veil of darkness becomes scratched with pinpricks of light. Soon the images will come. Focus. A shrill cry of surprise. He drowsily unfurled his hands
Jackson flows around the streets in a long black cloak that edges right down to his feet. His halo of black and grey hair holds up a dark cowl. At every corner he crawls on his knees and sweeps up the dirt and litter with his bare hands and drops it in a bag he
When I was four, I drew a stick man. A long figure in black crayon, with spider-like hands and a featureless round head, he stood on jagged grass like the blade of a saw, while behind him a yellow ball shone bright lines into the sky. Mum was thrilled when I gave her the picture.
Movie making is an expensive affair. It helps to have visually appealing locations, which is why any film made in Rome has got a head start. From Bicycle Thieves to The Talented Mr Ripley, from La Dolce Vita to, er, Hudson Hawk, the city of Rome – with its mix of medieval alleyways, renaissance palaces, baroque fountains and fascist architecture –
Mary Shelley (2018) is not the story of Mary Shelley’s life, despite the title. Her life was one long gothic nightmare. She endured untold grief, beginning with her mother (famous proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft) who died giving birth to her. She then outlived as a young adult, in a relatively short period time, her half-sister Fanny,
Ah, Mars. There isn’t a planet in the celluloid Galaxy that gets more attention than the mysterious red world, where countless films have tried to unearth the riddles of what may lie beneath the surface of the terrestrial planet, with its thin atmosphere composed primarily of carbon dioxide. The Martian, On The Red Planet, Mission
I’ll be honest: I’d never heard of the controversial and rebel psychologist R.D. Laing until I’d watched Mad to be Normal, a counterculture icon who attracted an almost cult-like following among the young and impressionable during the swinging sixties, but I wonder if first-time writer/director Robert Mullan, author of several books based the psychiatrist, paints the
