Muted Lunacy

Movies rank right up there with books for me. Another form of (sometimes) mindless entertainment to take one’s mind off of the everyday shit for a short time. I tend towards any movie that is not mainstream Hollywood blockbuster type. Give me an obscure unknown film any day. That can be good in many ways, notably in that I never had any problems finding the movies I wanted when I used to go to Blockbuster!

“Dead Is Dead Quiet”
Written for the stage by Marsha Norman, ‘NIGHT, MOTHER opened on Broadway in 1983 with Anne Pitoniak and Kathy Bates in the roles of Thelma and Jessie Cates. It proved a stunning success with critics and audiences alike, running 380 performances, receiving the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, a Tony award for [...]

Ranked 34 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 Greatest American Films, To Kill a Mockingbird is quite simply one of the finest family-oriented dramas ever made. A beautiful and deeply affecting adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, the film retains a timeless quality that transcends its historically dated subject [...]

An indictment of the British class system dressed up like a Ralph Lauren ad Another Country is the movie that made very young and very gorgeous Rupert Everett a star. Whatever other ideas it has knocking around its head (and there are quite a lot of them), director Marek Kanievska’s adaptation of Julian Mitchell’s play [...]

“Which side will you be on?”
Lindsay Anderson’s If.… is a daringly anarchic vision of British society, set in a boarding school in late-sixties England. Before Kubrick made his mischief iconic in A Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell made a hell of an impression as the insouciant Mick Travis, who, along with his school chums, trumps authority [...]

“Ride with the Living Dead!”
Somewhere in the English countryside a nihilistic biker (Nicky Henson) decides to make the name of his violent motorcycle gang (”The Living Dead”) more than just a slogan. With the help of his dear old mum (Beryl Reid), who just happens to be a frog-worshipping occultist, he dives to his death [...]

“No one can harm you in your imagination”
Closet Land is unique because it takes torture as it’s entire setting. Unremittingly bleak and oppressive, Radha Bharadwaj’s film assaults the senses and the mind. Shot on a single, sparse set in a style that recalls German Expressionism, there is nothing to divert one’s attention from the horrific [...]