Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
Movie Watch
In his second screen adventure, British super spy Austin Powers must return to 1969, as arch-nemesis...
100 Shakespeare Films
Book
From Oscar-winning British classics to Hollywood musicals and Westerns, from Soviet epics to...
The Beginnings of the Cinema in England,1894-1901: 1894-1896: Volume 1
Book
Describing in detail one of the most inventive periods in the history of English cinema, the volumes...
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
Book
With its jagged, stylised sets, menacing shadows and themes of murder, madness and delirium, Das...
Hitchcock's British Films
Barry Keith Grant and Maurice Yacowar
Book
Originally published in 1977 and long out of print, Maurice Yacowar's Hitchcock's British Films was...
Peter Strickland recommended Only You (1994) in Movies (curated)
Alien
Book
A legendary fusion of science fiction and horror, Alien (1979) is one of the most enduring modern...
Awix (3310 KP) rated The Wicker Man (1973) in Movies
Feb 18, 2018 (Updated Feb 18, 2018)
Books have been written about the tortuous distribution endured by The Wicker Man and its producers; rumours persist that the original much longer version is buried under a motorway somewhere in England. But all the available cuts are excellent, if not superb: the film is not particularly scary per se, more a queasy examination of how society, morality and religion intersect with one another; manages to make moral relativism seem more disturbing than devil-worship, somehow. Has one of the greatest non-endings in cinema history. Great performances, banging tunes, thoughtful and playful script; a film for all seasons, but goes especially well with a barbecue.
Jeremy Workman recommended Green for Danger (1947) in Movies (curated)
Awix (3310 KP) rated The Eagle Has Landed (1976) in Movies
May 22, 2018 (Updated May 22, 2018)
Good performances, mostly, and some well-staged action in the closing sections of the film; what's curious about it is the way that the Germans are mostly presented sympathetically, at least as much as the British and American characters. It's a war movie without bad guys, but without much sense of moral or emotional investment either - as a result it's enjoyable as a piece of action cinema, but rather shallow. (It doesn't feel like the moral ambiguity is a deliberate creative choice: Caine thought the director was more interested in going fishing than in overseeing the final edit.) Fun in a disposable sort of way; you could be forgiven for expecting more, given the talent involved.