Nick Bartlett

Critical popcorn • 5th March 2025

The Surfer review: Dir. Lorcan Finnegan [Glasgow Film Festival 2025]

It’s become almost obsolete to point out that Nicolas Cage has made some discerning choices in film roles lately. Whether delivering over the top, bombastic performances (Mandy, Color Out of Space) or embracing quieter, more introspective roles (Pig, Dream Scenario), Cage seems to be really revelling in this stage in his career, and has cultivated one of the most fascinating late-career renaissances in Hollywood.

Critical popcorn • 4th March 2025

The Punch and Judy Man Blu-ray review: Dir. Jeremy Summers [StudioCanal]

Tony Hancock’s second and final cinematic outing as a leading man is a fascinating yet flawed film. In some ways, The Punch and Judy Man improves on The Rebel – its cinematography is more refined, its tone more introspective—but as a comedy, it falls short. What remains is a whimsical, often beautifully observed portrait of a seaside entertainer grappling with a changing world.

Critical popcorn • 3rd March 2025

The Rebel Blu-ray review: Dir. Robert Day [StudioCanal]

Tony Hancock is one of Britain’s greatest institutions, though his appeal never quite crossed the Atlantic. His class-obsessed persona – masterfully nurtured by writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson for Hancock’s Half Hour – appealed to UK audiences but was perhaps too specifically British, or possibly too nuanced, for American audiences.

Critical popcorn • 27th February 2025

Tornado review: Dir. John Maclean [Glasgow Film Festival 2025]

A samurai-western revenge thriller set in 1700s Britain, Tornado is an audacious genre hybrid from John Maclean. While it doesn’t entirely stick the landing, this atmospheric and idiosyncratic film has “cult classic” written all over it.

Critical popcorn • 12th February 2025

The Lion In Winter Blu-ray review: Dir. Anthony Harvey [Vintage Classics Collection]

The Lion in Winter is a fascinating film that feels somewhat unusual today. Following hot on the heels of period drama A Man for All Seasons (released two years earlier), this is far more intimate, but somehow more melodramatic. It’s a pretty humdrum story of a dysfunctional family at Christmas. Except this particular family happens to be a medieval royal dynasty.

Critical popcorn • 10th February 2025

Punch-Drunk Love Blu-ray review: Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson [Criterion Collection]

When it originally came out, Punch-Drunk Love was a box office bomb, with many thinking Paul Thomas Anderson had made his first misstep as a director. After the virtuoso masterpiece that was Magnolia, what on earth was he thinking of, making an Adam Sandler film?

6th February 2025

Haunted House Of Horror Review (88 Films Blu-ray Release)

While not as iconic as Hammer or Amicus, Tigon Films were responsible for some of the most iconic and interesting British horror films of the 1970s. Despite some subversive ideas, The Haunted House of Horror is not one of their finest. Compared to Witchfinder General and The Blood on Satan’s Claw, it feels hastily thrown together, with a fraught production contributing to a pretty ramshackle storyline.

Critical popcorn • 5th February 2025

September 5 review: Dir. Tim Fehlbaum

I had a really vivid dream the other day. (It’s a strange way to start a review but bear with me.) I was walking my son to school with my brother, and when we got to the building, my brother went in ahead of me, but then quickly ran back out and said just one word: “run.” That’s when I woke up.

Critical popcorn • 4th February 2025

Winchester ’73 4K UHD/Blu-ray review: Dir. Anthony Mann [Criterion Collection]

Anthony Mann has always been my favourite director of westerns. He has a unique blend of John Ford’s mythic heroes and the fatalism of Sam Peckinpah, plus the sparse aesthetics and moral ambivalence of Budd Boetticher and Samuel Fuller.

Critical popcorn • 3rd February 2025

Exclusive Interview with The Cell’s Director Tarsem Singh

Tarsem Singh‘s psychological thriller The Cell is a surreal blend of Fantastic Voyage, The Silence Of The Lambs and Inception, the type of film that only this director could make.

Jennifer Lopez plays Catherine Deane, a child psychologist using experimental technology that allows her to enter the mind of a catatonic patient. At the same time, the FBI is hunting a serial killer (Vincent D’Onofrio) who kidnaps women and drowns them in elaborate, remote chambers.

29th January 2025

Best of the Best: Steven Soderbergh

In a new feature, we count down the best work of a chosen filmmaker, actor, producer, and more, and why their work has had such an impact on the industry. First up, Nick Bartlett waxes lyrical about Steven Soderbergh, an award-winning filmmaker whose new film, Presence, is in cinemas now…

Critical popcorn • 27th January 2025

Cure 4K UHD review: Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa [Masters Of Cinema]

In the wave of hyperbolic praise surrounding the release of Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs last year, one detail stood out to me. It wasn’t the inevitable “scariest film ever” soundbites, but rather the comparisons critics made to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, a quietly devastating psychological thriller that continues to haunt audiences decades after its release.

23rd January 2025

Presence Review

I don’t know if it’s cool to like Steven Soderbergh anymore, but I love Steven Soderbergh. Unlike his contemporaries, Soderbergh is rarely spoken of as an auteur or someone who consistently pushes the boundaries of filmmaking. Yet he’s been quietly delivering one genre classic after another for the past decade, at a rate that is frankly, alarming.

Critical popcorn • 20th January 2025

The Mother and The Whore 4K UHD/Blu-ray review: Dir. Jean Eustache [Criterion Collection]

Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore has long been a cinematic white whale— notoriously unavailable for decades and shrouded in an almost mythical reputation. As such, it’s the perfect candidate for the Criterion treatment, and this release doesn’t disappoint.

Critical popcorn • 13th January 2025

Mikey And Nicky Blu-ray review: Dir. Elaine May [Criterion Collection]

Elaine May is one of the great cautionary tales of film directing – having made three incredibly accomplished films, she made one flop (albeit one of the biggest flops of all time, the disaster that is Ishtar) and then was put off directing, seemingly for good. While The Heartbreak Kid and A New Leaf are both exceptional films, for me, Mikey And Nicky is her masterpiece.

11th January 2025

Werewolves Review

In a landscape where horror films increasingly subvert conventions – like the upcoming Wolfman, which promises a fresh twist on lycanthropy tropes – it’s almost refreshing to see a more straightforward take on the genre.

FILMHOUNDS Magazine • 26th December 2024

A Perfect Film? Galaxy Quest at 25 - FILMHOUNDS Magazine

In his book, Bambi vs Godzilla, acclaimed playwright and screenwriter David Mamet wrote:“The Godfather, A Place in the Sun, Dodsworth, Galaxy Quest–these are perfect films. They start with a simple premise and proceed logically, and inevitably, toward a conclusion both surprising and inevitable.”

Critical popcorn • 23rd December 2024

Nosferatu review: Dir. Robert Eggers

When you hear filmmakers claim “I’ve been wanting to make this film my whole life,” it often feels like PR hyperbole. In Robert Eggers‘ case though, this is demonstrably true. Having directed a play of Nosferatu in high school, the story has clearly loomed large in his mind for much of his working life, and clear that the director has poured his heart into this Gothic, sweeping horror epic.

FILMHOUNDS Magazine • 17th December 2024

Corny But Charming - Willow (Blu-ray Review) - FILMHOUNDS Magazine

The eighties were a golden era of specific, idiosyncratic fantasy films. While they lacked the epic scale and depth of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, they offered unique charm and creativity, and most importantly, personality. Among these, Willow stands out as an oddity: darker than Labyrinth, more coherent than Legend, and less niche than Krull. Though it may not be as iconic as Dragonslayer, Willow deserves far more credit than its reputation suggests.

17th December 2024

Bogart: Life Comes In Flashes Review

Humphrey Bogart is just about the most iconic actor in cinema history. For me, Bogart has always stood apart from other leading men of his era. He possessed an intensity and authenticity that outshone his contemporaries.

Critical popcorn • 15th December 2024

Hitchcock – The Beginning Blu-ray review (StudioCanal)

Celebrating Alfred Hitchcock’s 125th birthday, this lovingly restored boxset from StudioCanal offers ten films from his early career, spanning the transition from silent cinema to sound. The central film in the set is Blackmail, Hitchcock’s first sound film and a remarkable showcase of his experimentation with the medium.

Critical popcorn • 15th December 2024

We Live In Time review. Dir: John Crowley

John Crowley’s We Live In Time is a refreshingly unconventional love story told across three distinct timelines. It chronicles the relationship between impulsive chef Almut (Florence Pugh) and timid Tobias (Andrew Garfield), from their meet-cute (she hits him with her car) to the birth of their daughter, and the fateful doctors appointment where Almut is diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer.

14th December 2024

Exclusive Interview: Katherine Ferguson on her new intimate, engrossing film on the life of Humphrey Bogart

Released this week, Humphrey Bogart: Life Comes In Flashes takes what is quite a well-documented life and makes it feel refreshing and new, largely due to the perspective that writer/director Kathryn Ferguson and co-writer Eleanor Emptage bring to the material. A thoughtful, candid look at Bogart’s life, the documentary is told through the lens of his relationships with the women in his life (beginning with his
harsh mother and ending with his marriage to Lauren Bacall).

Critical popcorn • 2nd December 2024

The Fisher King 4K UHD/Blu-ray review: Dir. Terry Gilliam [Criterion Collection]

You often hear older films described with the phrase “it wouldn’t get made today…,” this is usually reserved for some reactionary point of view that yes, the film is probably quite rightly left in the past. The Fisher King is different, a whimsical story that on paper seems perfect fodder for 21st century moviegoers.