Category: Movies


Crossbones style – pirates have the power

Filed under: Movies — Leave a comment
September 15, 2025

The options for watching films and series are now vaster than ever but this wider choice comes at a cost.

In this fragmented market you need more and more subscriptions to watch the same shows you used to find in one place. Streaming services include Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+,  Mubi, Apple TV, Paramount+, Hulu, HBO Max  and NBC’s Peacock. Piracy has become a simpler and cheaper alternative for everyone. According to London‑based piracy analytics firm MUSO, unlicensed streaming is the predominant source of TV and film piracy, accounting for 96% in 2023.

 Clearly if/when piracy increases and the number of paying customers for streaming sites falls, this has a serious knock-on effect on jobs and local economies.

But the companies have only themselves to blame. Greed is not good.

Most platforms now offer plans that, despite the fee, force advertisements on subscribers.  As Gabriel V Rindborg wrote in his article ‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay’:  “Studios carve out fiefdoms, build walls and levy tolls for those who wish to visit. The result is artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance.” 

Corporate business models may crumble but I for one won’t be shedding any tears. To paraphrase Patti Smith : Pirates have the power to wrestle the world from fools.

Tags: , , , ,
Comment

Mirror Visions – Reflections On Class

Filed under: British identity, Movies — Leave a comment
September 14, 2025

The distorted images in a convex mirror on the living room wall of a well-furnished luxury home in London reflect some uncomfortable truths about the British class divide.

Beneath an apparently civilized veneer, The Servant (Joseph Losey,1963) evokes a power struggle with a homoerotic subtext. One critic pronounced it “a kind of Sadeian prison theatre in which the class system is picked apart in clashes of manners and morals.”  

Freely adapted from a 1948 novel by Robin Maugham, this was the first of three movies directed by Joseph Losey to be based on screenplays by Harold Pinter.  Losey found exile in the UK in 1953 during the McCarthy era after being blacklisted by Hollywood.  Pinter was an Englishman motivated more by the language of human interaction than the rhetorical conventions of agitprop. His writing is so distinctive that an eponymous adjective was coined to describe his style. Sinister ‘Pinter-esque’ pauses are a recurring  feature of stage plays that have been characterised as ‘comedies of menace’.  Pinter’s ambiguous dialogues and brooding silences highlight the way in which communication often takes place beyond words, something the Swedish writer Per Wästberg called “the abyss under chat.” 

Pinter’s rage against the complacent upper classes is evident from his venomous screenplay. Tony (James Fox)  epitomises the unmerited arrogance that often comes from inherited wealth and privilege. He boasts pompously of planning to construct low-income housing for the people of Asia Minor but does no work to bring this project to fruition. This pipedream merely serves to emphasise his idleness.

Hugo Barrett (Dirk Bogarde) is his punctilious manservant full of very specific design tips e.g. “Mandarin red and fuchsia is a very chic combination, sir”. Barratt’s obsequious professionalism and intelligence contrasts with his master’s self-satisfied smugness and stupidity. Slowly but surely the power relations between these two men are reversed. The strong implication is that power and privilege are ubiquitously corrupting influences.

What we are witness to is not merely a fictional guide in how to overturn an archaic class structure but a suggestion of a rottenness at the core of the supposedly civilised society. The rich overlord is seen as an such an anachronous figure that the film carries the hope that he is representative of a dying breed. The continued appeal of Downton Abbey proves that this dream is far from being realised.

This is the third of a series of blog posts tied to mirror images in British films based on themes contained in a soon to be published book entitled  “Mirror Visions – From the New Wave to the New Wyrd. Reflections on British cinema.”

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Comment

Chicks with picks meet the crawlers

Filed under: Gender, Movies — Leave a comment
July 31, 2025

The Descent directed by Neil Marshall (UK, 2005)

Behind you!

Neil Marshall’s debut feature film – Dog Soldiers (2002) – was set in the Scottish Highlands and followed the (mis)fortunes of six trainee British soldiers battling in vain against rabid werewolves. These men ended up barracaded in a woodland cottage alongside a lone female – Megan, a zoologist. In true Night of the Living Dead style they are picked off one by one .

Perhaps conscious of the strident macho vibe of this film, Marshall’s follow up – The Descent – flips the gender to follow the (mis)fortunes of six women who are into extreme sports. The opening scene shows these lasses braving rapids in a dinghy.

The lone man in this story doesn’t last long. One could say he drew the short straw or, more accurately the long metals poles, since these are the sharp objects he is impaled upon in a freak car accident while driving his wife, Sara (Shauna Macdonald) home. The couple’s young daughter dies in the same accident. Moments before the crash, Sara says to him “You seem distant” and it transpires that this fatal distraction was all due to a clandestine fling he was having with another of the female adventurers, Juno (Natalie Mendoza).

One year on, Juno has organized a group reunion with a planned caving trip in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina (although the film was shot in Hertfordshire, England and Scotland). The claustrophobia of this ill-fated underground adventure proves the perfect setting for a horror film. When you’re down a hole the escape options are severely limited. In haunted houses there is at least the possibility of making a run for it although, as we well know, this rarely ends well.

The six chicks (picks not shown)

In the first half of the film, we follow the ‘chicks with picks’ who, almost inevitably, find themselves trapped in a tunnel system without a map to guide them. Juno breaks the news to the other five that this particular cave is previously unexplored. Thanks for the warning!

Things go from bad to worse when the women realise they are not alone. The other cave-dwellers are pale-skinned creatures in human form that are billed as ‘crawlers’ on the credits. Appearance-wise they are a mix between Gollum and alien life forms. Behaviour-wise they are rabid monsters who feed on human flesh.

Continue reading →
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

Mirror Visions – The vanity of human wishes

Filed under: Books, Movies — Leave a comment
July 11, 2025

The British class system depends on its nation’s citizens knowing their place and not getting any fancy ideas above their station. Two films from the late 1950s and mid-1960s show what can happen to those who challenge this convention.

The image on the left is from Room At The Top (1959) directed by Jack Clayton. The second is  from John Schlesinger’s Darling (1965).  

The smarmy anti-hero of the first is Joe Lampton, a man on the make stylishly played by Laurence Harvey. This film is based on John Braine’s novel of the same title. Braine described his creation as a man who behaves “like a little boy with his nose pressed against the window of a beautiful candy store.”  Lampton is determined to defy those who label him as a small town nobody and savour the sweet stuff money can buy.  

Getting the girl (the boss’s daughter),  the top job in the company and a handsome salary would in other circumstances constitute a happy ending but here they are the ingredients of a personal tragedy. The look on Lampton’s face as he puts on his suit jacket is not that of a man happy with his lot.  

In Working Class Hero,  John Lennon sang  “There’s room at the top /They are telling you still/But first you must learn to smile as you kill. The Bible (Matthew 16:26) issues a similar warning: “What will it profit a man, though he should win all the whole world, if he loses his own soul?  Joe Lampton does not heed these warnings. The film shows that upward mobility is possible but breaking through Britain’s rigid class-bound barriers may come with increased riches but you must be willing to live with no peace of mind.

Julie Christie’s look of puzzlement in the image from Darling is also one of dissatisfaction. The unmade bed in the background is not the aftermath of a sexual romp but seems to symbolise one of many sleepless nights.

Christie plays Diana Scott, a glamourous model and free-spirit who seems to have the world at her feet. But like Room At The Top, Darling is a cautionary tale that shows the illusions and delusions surrounding material success.

Continue reading →
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

Mirror Visions : from myth to movie

Filed under: British identity, Movies — Leave a comment
July 7, 2025
Echo and Narcissus by John Waterhouse (1903 oil painting – Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool)

When we face the world we need to know what we look like. The practical importance of mirrors is undeniable. You can check for blemishes, spots and general presentability.

On the downside, they can also be objects which encourage vanity and give sustenance to bloated egos.

In Greek mythology, Narcissus fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. He became so hopelessly besotted with his reflection that he lost all sense of his true self.

The myth warns against the worship of one’s own outward appearance to the point that it results in alienation from others. I guess one modern equivalent might be an addiction to selfies.

In everyday life when we look at our reflections we commonly ask questions like :

•             Is this what I really look like? 

•             Is this how I want to look?

•             Is this what I have become?

The link between these questions and self-identity are obvious. Mirrors say a lot about how we see ourselves.

In the context of movies, mirror images can be applied themes like class, gender and education. A wider connection to concepts of cultural and national identity is also possible.

Continue reading →
Tags: , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment