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“Enough is never enough.”

Larry Cohen was the inspiration for our first zine, and the only filmmaker who we’ve devoted an entire issue to. He gave up his time for a lengthy transatlantic phone call from a fan with minimal credentials, and was funny, forthcoming and patient with some extremely geeky questions. He answered all of them before he had to sign off, but we could’ve picked his brains for hours more, on Black Caesar, God Told Me To, It’s Alive, Q, The Stuff and Wicked Stepmother.

And we could’ve written so much more – on the still unsung The Private Files of J Edgar Hoover, Special Effects, The Ambulance, the much-too-easily overlooked sequels A Return to Salem’s Lot and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive – because, thankfully, his filmography – especially as a writer (and so many unproduced scripts!) – has so much more great stuff to discover.

Larry wrote like a demon, could finish a script almost as quickly as it took him to dictate it, but he had a 700-page autobiography on the shelf, “Because I think that there’s more to write, there’s more to tell. So, I haven’t finished yet.” It was hard to believe he ever would, but if it’s anything like his films, it’ll be one hell of a book.

RIP, maestro.

Larry Cohen RIP "Enough is never enough." Larry Cohen was the inspiration for our first zine, and the only filmmaker who we've devoted an entire issue to.

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Show + Tell

What’s the best film you’ve never heard of? Our new Show + Tell event (at ISO Design, Glasgow on 23/10) invites guests simply to share a trailer and some of their unique perspective on cinema. Confirmed guests for the first Show + Tell include:

Claire Biddles (Writer) Calvin Halliday (Programmer, Pity Party Film Club) Lydia Honeybone (Programmer, Queer Classics Film Festival) Megan Mitchell (Program…

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Silence Programme Note for GFT Martin Scorsese's Silence opens at GFT Monday 2nd January and runs till Thursday 19th. My specially commissioned programme note will be available at screenings, but you can also read it online…

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The Neon Demon (2016)

The Neon Demon (2016)

“I thought that I was the greatest filmmaker of all time, that I was God’s gift to mankind. And I’ve learned that I’m not the greatest filmmaker of all time. But I’ve accepted that the kinds of films I make, I’m the absolute best at.”1 The Neon Demon (2016) is Nicolas Winding Refn’s 11th film, and the second since his breakthrough commercial success with Drive (2011). He followed that film with…

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Tale of Tales (2015)

Tale of Tales (2015)

“The tale is not beautiful if nothing is added to it.”1 Matteo Garrone’s eighth film seems, at first glance, to be a significant departure for the director. Garrone made his breakthrough with 2002’s The Embalmer (L’imbalsamatore), cemented his reputation with breakthrough-hit Gomorrah (Gomorra, 2008), and won Cannes’ Grand Prix for his most recent film, 2012’s Reality. His films have generally…

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Mustang (2015)

“I wanted to portray these girls like a five-headed monster. They were like supernatural, otherworldly creatures for me with their long hair, which was reminiscent of a horse’s mane.”1 Deniz Gamze Ergüven Mustang is the debut feature of writer-director Deniz Gamze Ergüven. Most frequently/lazily compared to another debut, The Virgin Suicides (dir. Sofia Coppola, 2000), Ergüven’s film revolves…

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Dheepan (2015)

By all accounts, Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan (2015) is a curious film. On one hand, it’s a story of immigration, of Sri Lankan refugees seeking escape to the west, told in an almost documentary-style form. On the other, it’s a slow-burning descent into bloody violence that started life as a Peckinpah remake. Its nuanced, carefully measured character study gives way eventually to an explosive…

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Hail, Caesar! (2016)

It somehow makes sense that in making a movie about movie making, Joel and Ethan Coen would find the ultimate realisation of their recurring themes, one of which is circular, ouroboric self-reflexivity itself (think of a man chasing his own hat, as in Miller’s Crossing (1990), in lieu of a tail). As many of their films are, Hail, Caesar! (2016) is as allusive as it is elusive. How, then, to…

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Pasolini (2014)

“He was an artist who was engaged in his work and the world, a political and personal activist, constantly rethinking and re-examining his position, and always living in the moment.” Abel Ferrara on Pier Paolo Pasolini1 “The motivation that unites all of my films is to give back to reality its original sacred significance.” Pier Paolo Pasolini2 Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini (2014) debuted at the Venice…

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Going Clear (2015)

“The public has been hampered in the knowledge of Scientology by the fact that so far as I can establish, on every occasion that the organisation has been named by a newspaper, that newspaper has been served with a writ of libel.” Peter Hordern MP, Parliamentary debate, 6th March, 19671 Alex Gibney’s adaptation of Jeffrey Wright’s book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & The Prison of Belief,…

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Jauja (2014)

“The Ancient Ones said that Jauja was a mythological land of abundance and happiness. Many expeditions tried to find the place to verify this. With time, the legend grew disproportionately… The only thing that is known for certain is that all who tried to find this earthly paradise got lost on the way.” Jauja, epigraph “You’re trying to make sense of what’s happening, and gradually starting to…

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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

“..its origin and purpose still a total mystery.” Dr Heywood R Floyd (William Sylvester) in 2001: A Space Odyssey1 “Worth going to see? I can well believe it / Worth seeing? Mneh!” WH Auden, Moon Landing2 In 1968, when most people alive today – to steal Arthur C Clarke’s phrase – had not even been born, Stanley Kubrick made his acknowledged masterpiece. Experiencing it in 2014, perhaps for the…

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The Double (2014)

The Double (2014) is Richard Ayoade’s second feature-length film. Since reading law at Cambridge, where he also served as president of the storied Footlights theatrical club, Ayoade has made a steady ascent, via a stint starring in a beloved sitcom (The IT Crowd), to becoming one of the most promising young directors working in Britain today. Even more impressively, the term “auteur” has begun to…

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The Selfish Giant (2013)

The Selfish Giant (2013)

The Selfish Giant (dir. Clio Barnard, 2013) is the director’s second feature-length film, after 2010’s celebrated The Arbor. Barnard’s film is self-consciously in a lineage with Bicycle Thieves (Dir. Vittorio De Sica, 1948), Kes (Dir. Ken Loach, 1969) and The Apple (Dir. Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998) intended, in the director’s words, to be “a film in the realist tradition of fables about children.”1…

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The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

“Especially in America, I think people are born into tribes. And I wanted to make a movie about two different tribes that end up colliding and then the reverberation of a violent episode. I wanted to do something about how you can’t get away from history. I wanted to make a film about that, but also deeply personal, about becoming a father and passing things on.” Derek Cianfrance1 Derek…

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The Master (2012)

The Master (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012) was always going to be a high profile project, following the celebrated director’s Oscar-laden There Will Be Blood (2007) and being the latest addition to a CV that includes Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999) and Punch-Drunk Love (2002). But when it was revealed that Anderson would be drawing inspiration from the life of L Ron Hubbard, interest in…

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McCullin (2012)

“Photography is the truth, if it’s being handled by a truthful person.” Don McCullin1 The story is told that, upon viewing an exhibition of Don McCullin’s work, Henri Cartier-Bresson approached the photographer to say, “I have one word for you – Goya”. Between 1810 and 1820, the Spanish painter Francisco Goya made a series of prints later commonly and collectively known as The Disasters Of War.…