Jackdaw Posts

The ABC cinema on Vicar Lane no longer exists, but a surprising amount of my childhood still seems to be living there. The building opened as The Ritz in 1934 and survived long enough to witness the arrival of television, video recorders, multiplexes and the internet before finally closing in February 2000. A few years later it was demolished. Today, unless you already know what stood there, you could walk straight past the site without realising that generations of Leeds families once spent their Saturday afternoons disappearing into its darkness. The ABC Cinema, Leeds. Any resemblance to an old photograph is entirely intentional.   Part 1: Memory I occasionally find myself doing exactly the opposite. I walk past and remember. Not continuously. Not in some sentimental, misty-eyed fashion. More in flashes. An old film poster. The smell of the foyer. The anticipation of arriving half an hour early because my parents preferred to leave nothing to chance. Memory tends to work like...

The first thing Angel Heart does is lie to you. Not openly. Not maliciously. It simply introduces itself as a detective story and waits patiently for you to believe it. There's Harry Angel, a shabby New York private investigator played by Mickey Rourke back when he looked like he had been carved out of cigarette smoke and bad decisions. A wealthy client hires him to find a missing singer named Johnny Favorite. The job seems straightforward enough. In cinema, this is usually the point where the detective follows clues. In Angel Heart , he follows a trail of corpses, and the deeper he digs, the stranger the world becomes.   Original illustration created for this review, inspired by the themes and atmosphere of Angel Heart (1987). Film Noir Goes to Hell By 1987, film noir had been revived, reinvented, deconstructed and occasionally strangled by critics armed with French terminology. Director Alan Parker looked at the genre and asked a different question: What if the detective story ...

There are crime films, and then there are crime sermons. Underworld U.S.A. doesn’t so much tell a story as it shouts one from the alleyway, kicks you in the ribs, and leaves you bleeding under the neon. Directed by Samuel Fuller in 1961, it’s one of the director’s most unrelenting noirs, a film obsessed with vengeance, power, and America’s love affair with organised crime. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t subtle. But like a glass of cheap whiskey at 3am, it does exactly what it should. The dark, revenge-driven world of Samuel Fuller’s Underworld U.S.A. (1961) Samuel Fuller: The Man Who Spat on Hollywood’s Carpet Samuel Fuller wasn’t a man for polish. He was a crime reporter at seventeen, a soldier in World War II, and later a filmmaker who made movies the way prizefighters throw punches—fast, raw, and aimed at the jaw. Underworld U.S.A. came late in his noir cycle, after Pickup on South Street and The Crimson Kimono. If those films toyed with subtlety, Underworld U.S.A. tears subtlet...

In the storm-tossed cinematic waters of maritime epics, The Bounty (1984) sails in with a sturdy hull, a high pedigree, and a curious leak: its leading man. Directed by Roger Donaldson and boasting a dream cast of British heavyweights, the film is the sixth screen adaptation of the infamous 1789 mutiny aboard HMS Bounty. Yes—six. Turns out, treason at sea sells better than peace on land.  But this Bounty tried something different. It jettisoned the noble-Brits-vs-crazy-seaman trope in favour of nuance, psychological realism, and a somewhat smouldering Mel Gibson doing his best to act conflicted rather than confused. It's a movie that wants to be deep, dark, and daring. And sometimes it is. But like Captain Bligh’s breadfruit trees, not all of it makes it to shore.   Marketing mutiny: Brian Bysouth’s poster delivers stormy skies, tense stares, and just enough promise to make you hoist the sails. Castaways and Contradictions: Who’s Really the Villain Here? Forget Errol Fl...

Michael Mann takes James Fenimore Cooper’s 19th-century novel, strips away the flowery prose, and leaves us with sweat, blood, and Daniel Day-Lewis running through the American wilderness like an Olympic athlete with a musket. It’s not a quiet film. It’s a drumbeat. Muskets cracking, cannons thundering, war cries tearing apart the green hills. It’s raw, relentless, and unapologetically violent — a cinematic forest fire that consumes everything in its path Theatrical release poster  20th Century Fox In a Nutshell: Death, Love, and the Frontier The story is deceptively simple: British versus French in the French and Indian War, with Native nations caught in the middle. Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) is the adopted white son of a dying Mohican line. He straddles two worlds — European and Indigenous — and fights for survival, love, and a code older than any empire. Madeleine Stowe’s Cora Munro is the love interest who keeps his heart tethered. Russell Means’ Chingachgook is the ancho...

Hollywood’s Golden Age wasn’t about glitter and glam. It was about control. A handful of studios ran everything — from the script to the starlet’s smile, from who got the spotlight to who got the boot. These studios were kingdoms. Loyalty was currency. Contracts were shackles. The red carpet hid more dirt than dreams. Before streaming crushed patience and art became clicks, the Big Five didn’t just make movies. They manufactured myths. Fed America what it wanted: escape, fantasy, and faces to worship.   Lupe Vélez with Laurel and Hardy in Hollywood Party (1934) — a moment that captures the chaos and charm of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The Big Five — Kings of the Celluloid Jungle Forget heroes. Real power lived in boardrooms and soundstages. MGM was the lion — Clark Gable roared, Judy Garland dazzled, Laurel and Hardy played fools while executives counted cash. MGM’s lion might as well roar: “Thou shalt not rival us.” Warner Bros. brought grit — The Jazz Singer silenced silen...