Kiss Me, Stupid (Billy Wilder, 1964) Martyn Bamber April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 94 Skewering celebrity vanity, the allure of success and the obsession with fame, Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) takes a long, hard look at these subjects and is simultaneously fascinated and appalled, amused and aghast...
The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1963) Martyn Bamber April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 94 The subject of The Servant (1963) is the English class system and its tensions in swinging sixties London. The battleground for this class struggle is mainly confined to a single location, a house owned by...
The Old Dark House: Cinemagoing in the age of streaming Martyn Bamber October 2019 This is what defined cinema in the 2010s Issue 92 How has cinema changed over the last 10 years? This question is not about the art or business of cinema; it refers to the cinemagoing experience itself. Arguably, the movement that has had – and continues to...
The Terence Davies Trilogy (Terence Davies, 1976/1980/1983) Martyn Bamber October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 92 The autobiographical films of Terence Davies are not simply nostalgic journeys into the director’s past; they are piercing insights into the filmmaker’s turbulent early life. While Distant Voices, Still...
A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971) Martyn Bamber July 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 91 Elaine May’s film directing debut, A New Leaf (1971) is a pitch-black comedy centred on Henry Graham (Walter Matthau), an affluent, self-absorbed bachelor, who finds his expensive lifestyle in jeopardy due...
Early Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1956) Martyn Bamber March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 90 Sōshun (Early Spring, 1956) follows Yasujirō Ozu’s classic Tōkyō monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1953) in continuing to develop the director’s characteristic themes, including the demands of family life, the...
Moontide (Archie Mayo & Fritz Lang, 1942) Martyn Bamber October 2018 CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 88 Emerging from a troubled production history, Moontide seems overlooked in the annals of film history in general, and the story of 20th Century-Fox in particular. For instance, the entry on Moontide in The...
The Bride Wore Black (François Truffaut, 1968) Martyn Bamber March 2018 CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 86 Made during the period of François Truffaut’s fascination with Alfred Hitchcock, the French auteur’s La mariée était en noir (The Bride Wore Black, 1968) looks to the master of suspense for inspiration...
Zwartboek (Black Book, Paul Verhoeven, 2006) Martyn Bamber June 2017 CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 83 Zwartboek (Black Book) is a Holland homecoming for director Paul Verhoeven, returning to the Netherlands from the United States after the technically accomplished but narratively conventional (for Verhoeven)...
Raising Arizona (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1987) Martyn Bamber March 2017 CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 82 The Coen Brothers’ filmography can be broadly split into two strands: the serious works such as Blood Simple (1984), Fargo (1996) and No Country for Old Men (2007), and comedic diversions like The Big...
The Ballad of Cable Hogue Martyn Bamber October 2014 CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 72 Sam Peckinpah has a popular reputation as a macho movie director obsessed with portraying graphic scenes of violence and pursuing a relentlessly misogynistic outlook, particularly in the films he made after...
Living for the Moment: Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (Mark Hartley, 2008) Martyn Bamber February 2014 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Issue 70 “If you like outrageous cinema, you live and breathe to wait for those weird moments that happen every once in a while in genre cinema, where it’s like, you can’t believe you’re seeing what you’re...
