Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Memory:
The Origins Of Alien

Director – Alexandre O. Philippe – 2019 – US – Cert. 15 – 95m

**** 1/2

A detailed examination of the ideas and personalities behind Dan O’Bannon, H.R.Giger and Ridley Scott’s classic 1979 SF shocker Alien – in cinemas on Friday, August 30th 2019, and then on VoD the following Monday, September 2nd 2019

When Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) first came out, no one knew about its most notorious scene. These days it’s been so referenced in films, television and popular culture that everyone, it seems, does so. If you’ve never actually seen Alien, watch it before seeing this documentary or reading this review.

You’d be forgiven, as this new documentary starts, for thinking you’d wandered into a different film. Spiders on sun-drenched stone surfaces. Footage of Greek temples. But then, visuals clearly inspired by Alien show three Furies waking up on the floor of a spaceship interior and advancing towards camera. The voice-over invokes the myth of Clytemnestra and the Furies, although… [Read more…]

Memory: The Origins Of Alien is out in the UK on Friday, August 30th 2019, and then on VoD the following Monday, September 2nd 2019.

Review originally published in DMovies.org.

Trailer:

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

78/52

Director – Alexandre O. Philippe – 2017 – US – Cert. 15 – 91m

*****

Oh, mother, mother, what have you done??? Find out everything you ever wanted to know about the infamous shower scene, in this doc about Psycho – in the London Film Festival on October 13th and 15th 2017, cinemas on Friday, November 3rd 2017, and then on DVD and BFI Player Rental in 2018

When Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock) first came out in 1960, no one knew about the shower scene. These days it’s been so referenced in films, television and popular culture that everyone, it seems, does so.

This documentary is called 78/52 after the shower scene’s number of set-ups (78) and cuts (52). Psycho was shot in four weeks; one of the four was dedicated to shooting that one scene.

In some ways, 78/52 doesn’t do what it says on the tin. It talks a lot about Psycho the cultural phenomenon before it eventually gets round to the shower scene… [Read the rest]

78/52 is on BFI Player. It played BFI London Film Festival 2017 prior to cinema and DVD release.

Full review: DMovies.org.

Trailer:

Psycho trailer: