Finally decided to use those Alan Clarke box sets for something other than regular Penda's Fen rewatches - although I don't want to give the impression that regular Penda's Fen rewatches aren't a valid and important use of your time. George's Room is the earliest film in the set and might be the earliest of Clarke's films that survives, with others falling victim to the BBC's infamously negligent archive policies of the 1970s.

In a lot of ways, it's a…

For the first ten minutes or so, I thought this was going to be a five-star classic that was being slept on for inexplicable reasons. As the film went on, its lack of status became, er, more explicable - but it's still full of fascinating ideas and made with real confidence.

I'm a total anime dunce, so this was the first Mamuro Oshii film I've seen, although I was watching it with friends knowledgeable enough about his running motifs to…

I was going to add a caveat to this review, to say that perhaps it wasn't a 4.5 film, but if you're queer, or if you're from one of those towns - you know, the ones with shops that you've never seen without the shutters down, the ones whose people are said to be "workshy" by people on TV despite the fact that some of the older residents still have scars on their head that they got from literally, physically…