Judgement Day Revisited
Endlessly rebooted and pointlessly extended, the original Terminator film is a parable about radicalisation and commitment in the face of a terrifying — but mutable — future.
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Carl Neville
Carl Neville has written two books on film, Classless (Zero, 2010) and No More Heroes (Zero, 2015), and a novel, Resolution Way (Repeater Books, 2016).
One Man’s Trash
In the dark days of John Major’s Britain, Channel 4’s Eurotrash took aim at Britain’s relationship with ‘the continent’ and created a low-art surrealist classic in the process.
We Are the Pigs
The first ever anime feature, now back in cinemas, combines anthropomorphic animals and anti-Western agitation; it was also a work of fascist propaganda.
Ways of Ending
Mike Leigh’s apocalyptic ‘Naked’ was a terrifying picture of early 1990s Britain, alone in the director’s oeuvre in its brutal pessimism. How does it stand up in the equally bleak early 2020s?
Invented Traditions
Ben Wheatley’s ‘In the Earth’ uses the contemporary setting of the pandemic to play with some increasingly familiar imagery of folk horror and hauntology.
A Good, Hard-working Girl
Anime series ‘Aggretsuko’ plays with cutesy imagery as a means of forcing through a remorseless critique of contemporary work.
Together in Electric Dreams
A documentary film about the science fiction motif of ‘the world as a hallucination’ reveals something quite different — the tragedy of the means people use to cope with reality.
The Trawler and the Seagulls
‘Inhuman Resources,’ starring Eric Cantona, is an improbable thriller about a worker thrown on the scrapheap who becomes a heroic supervillain – a story which resonates with populist insurgencies of right and left.
The Holocaust on Film
A film adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s Holocaust book, ‘The Painted Bird,’ is a bracing but humane treatment of what ‘modern’ Europe descended into in the 1940s – and a reminder of what could happen again.
Last Exit to Hollywood
‘Disclosure,’ a heart-warming documentary about trans representation in mainstream cinema, mixes some radical politics with conservative aesthetics.
Inside the People’s Republic of Britain
Carl Neville discusses his new novel ‘Eminent Domain,’ which imagines an alternative Britain where Thatcherism didn’t prevail – and socialism shaped society instead of the market.
The Promised Land
Gurinder Chadha’s Springsteen-themed blockbuster Blinded by the Light is a poignant account of the class and racial ties that bind.
Tony Blair Made Me Hardcore
The ‘rave nostalgia’ film Beats provides an image of collective joy with politicised resonances in the present.
Shoplifters of Japan, Unite
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Palme d’Or-winning film focuses on an unusual Japanese family and their attempts to live in the cracks of a failing system.
Documenting Dignity
Agnes Varda has died. Her last film is a reminder that those on the margins of society are often most worthy of the camera’s gaze.