Change Your Image
oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx
...film... exists to consecrate the human face
...le cinema c'est comme des boules de clarté dans une ocean si sombre.
Je suis venu ici pour écrire un roman. C'est l'histoire d'un homme que j'ai inventé. Il est silencieux, naïf, sans audace, et il laisse passer les chances du bonheur. Je l'ai fait vice-consul de France à Calcutta. Vice-consul, profession médiocre, mais sûr ... et qui trompe. Calcutta, ville infinie de la lassitude d'être... Je dois maintenant dire sa défaite, son rêve ecrasé, et comment Calcutta, lentement, mettre en plein lumière sa solitude, sa banalité, son angoisse, si court.
Ce soir dans le port il y a un place libre dans la Funchalense. Mais ne crois pas jamais des gens comme moi.
REUNIS, LE SOIR, COMME DES CONSPIRATEURS, NE SE CACHANT AUCUNE PENSEE, USANT TOUR A TOUR D'UNE FORTUNE SEMBLABLE A CELLE DU VIEUX DE LA MONTAGNE; AYANT LES PIEDS DANS TOUS LES SALONS, LES MAINS DANS TOUS LES COFFRE-FORTS, LES COUDES DANS LA RUE, LEURS TETES SUR TOUS LES OREILLERS, ET, SANS SCRUPLES.
Quotes from Bruno Dumont, then AO Scott, dialogue from "La Femme Publique", "Nuit Noire, Calcutta" and "Les trois couronnes du matelot", typewritten note in Out 1: Noli Me Tangere.
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I like films about the body and human lifecycle, and about how the mind works. I also like films containing images that strike me with awe. In the mix are films about outsiders and the ostracised, and films that provoke a feeling of being haunted.
Films containing aspects of bildung and spiritual progression are also welcome, as are films of pure aestheticism.
Like everyone I also like escapist cinema.
Below is my ordered top 100.
Stay safe and happy.
Le soulier de satin / The Satin Slipper (1985 - Manoel de Oliveira)
Limite (1931 - Mario Peixoto)
Les enfants du paradis / Children of Paradise (1945 - Marcel Carné)
Les Maîtres du temps / Time Masters (1982 - René Laloux)
La maman et la putain / The Mother and the Whore (1973 - Jean Eustache)
Fanny och Alexander / Fanny and Alexander (1983 - Ingmar Bergman) TV Version
Il deserto dei tartari / The Desert of the Tartars (1976 - Valerio Zurlini)
Panique au village / A Town Called Panic (2009 - Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar)
有りがたうさん / Arigatô-san / Mr. Thank You (1936 - Hiroshi Shimizu)
Odd Man Out (1947 - Carol Reed)
The Tree of Life (2011 - Terrence Malick)
The Last Picture Show (1971 - Peter Bogdanovich)
Rok spokojnego słońca / A Year of the Quiet Sun (1984 - Krzysztof Zanussi)
The Spiral Staircase (1946 - Robert Siodmak)
Êxtase / Ecstasy (2020 - Moara Passoni)
Viskningar och rop / Cries and Whispers (1972 - Ingmar Bergman)
The Saga of Anatahan (1953 - Josef von Sternberg)
America, America (1963 - Elia Kazan)
Camille (1936 - George Cukor)
Club de femmes (1936 - Jacques Deval)
大菩薩峠 / Dai-bosatsu tôge / Sword of Doom (1966 - Kihachi Okamoto)
Nostos: Il ritorno / Nostos: The Return (1989 - Franco Piavoli)
Gymnopedies (1965 - Larry Jordan)
Cesarée (1978 - Marguerite Duras)
Deadfall (1968 - Bryan Forbes)
დასაწყისი / Dasatskisi / Beginning (2020 - Dea Kulumbegashvili)
Per qualche dollaro in più / For a Few Dollars More (1965 - Sergio Leone)
Footsteps in the Fog (1955 - Arthur Lubin)
耳をすませば / Mimi wo Sumaseba / Whisper of the Heart (1995 - Yoshifumi Kondô)
Consuming Spirits (2012 - Chris Sullivan)
Alaya (1987 - Nathaniel Dorsky)
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943 - Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid)
東京物語 / Tôkyô monogatari / Tokyo Story (1953 - Yasujirō Ozu)
The Pumpkin Eater (1964 - Jack Clayton)
Ferdinand the Bull (1938 - Dick Rickard)
天使のたまご / Tenshi no tamago / Angel's Egg (1985 - Mamoru Oshii)
Les bas-fonds / The Lower Depths (1936 - Jean Renoir)
Noroît (1976 - Jacques Rivette)
Quelque part quelqu'un / Somewhere, Someone (1972 - Yannick Bellon)
Peau d'âne / Once Upon a Time (1970 - Jacques Demy)
Хрусталёв, машину! / Khrustalyov, mashinu! / Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998 - Aleksey German)
Na srebrnym globie / On the Silver Globe (1988 - Andrzej Zulawski)
La nuit fantastique / The Fantastic Night (1942 - Marcel L'Herbier)
Vertigo (1958 - Alfred Hitchcock)
The Fanny Trilogy - Marius, Fanny, César (1931, 1932 & 1936 - Alexander Korda, Marc Allégret & Marcel Pagnol)
Gone with the Wind (1939 - Victor Fleming, George Cukor & Sam Wood)
Csillagosok, katonák / The Red and the White (1967 - Miklós Jancsó)
Jauja (2014 - Lisandro Alonso)
Shutter Island (2010 - Martin Scorsese)
La double vie de Véronique / The Double Life of Véronique (1991 - Krzysztov Kieślowski)
Slow Action (2011 - Ben Rivers)
Krysar / The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1986 - Jirí Barta)
Fünf Patronenhülsen / Five Cartridges (1960 - Frank Beyer)
The Immortal Story (1968 - Orson Welles)
L'armée des ombres / Army of Shadows (1969 - Jean-Pierre Melville)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999 - Stanley Kubrick)
Malmkrog / Manor House (2020 - Cristi Puiu)
Accident (1967 - Joseph Losey)
Au coeur de la vie / In the Midst of Life (1963 - Robert Enrico)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975 - Peter Weir)
The Secret of Kells (2009 - Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey)
A Pál utcai fiúk / The Boys of Paul Street (1968 - Zoltán Fábri)
Trys Dienos / Three Days (1991 - Sharunas Bartas)
Jofroi (1933 - Marcel Pagnol)
Liquid Sky (1982 - Slava Tsukerman)
Patterns (1956 - Fielder Cook)
King of New York (1990 - Abel Ferrara)
L'année dernière à Marienbad / Last year at Marienbad (1961 - Alain Resnais)
Trois couleurs: Bleu / Three Colours Blue (1993 - Krzysztov Kieślowski)
À l'ombre de la canaille bleue / In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal (1986 - Pierre Clémenti)
Gwen, le livre de sable / Gwen, the Book of Sand (1985 - Jean-François Laguionie)
Monsieur Verdoux (1947 - Charles Chaplin)
Bizalom / Confidence (1980 - István Szabó)
Нежность / Nezhnost / Tenderness (1967 - Elyor Ishmukhamedov)
Le Mepris / Contempt (1963 - Jean-Luc Godard)
Accattone (1961 - Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Smultronstället / Wild Strawberries (1957 - Ingmar Bergman)
Winter (2008 - Nathaniel Dorsky)
Una giornata particolare / A Special Day (1977 - Ettore Scola)
Meandre (1966 - Mircea Saucan)
Dodsworth (1936 - William Wyler)
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo / The Good the Bad and the Ugly (1966 - Sergio Leone)
A Canterbury Tale (1944 - Michael Powell)
At Sea (2007 - Peter Hutton)
Altair (1995 - Lewis Klahr)
Red Riding (2009 - Julian Jarrold, James Marsh & Anand Tucker)
L'Uccello dalle piume di cristallo / The Bird With Crystal Plumage (1970 - Dario Argento)
De helaasheid der dingen / The Misfortunates / The Shittiness of Things (2009 - Felix van Groeningen)
Семнадцать мгновений весны / Semnadtsat mgnoveniy vesny / Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973 - Tatyana Lioznova)
Frost (1997 - Fred Kelemen)
ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版: 破 / Evangerion shin gekijôban: Ha / Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (2009 - Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki, Hideaki Anno)
Francisca (1981 - Manoel de Oliveira)
うる星やつら2 ビューティフル・ドリーマー / Urusei Yatsura 2 Byūtifuru Dorīmā / Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer (1984 - Mamoru Oshii)
Amer (2009 - Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani)
Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010 - Panos Cosmatos)
The Liberation of the Mannique Mechanique (1967 - Steven Arnold)
El mar la mar (2017 - Joshua Bonnetta & J.P. Sniadecki)
A Shot in the Dark (1964 - Blake Edwards)
Upstream Color (2013 - Shane Carruth)
Into The Unknown (2009 - Deimantas Narkevičius)
It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it. - Andy Warhol.
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An error has ocurred. Please try againOf course the world ends regardless. So here I go looking at chateau noir*-y / pinot noir-y, heart-hurt, world-dead movies three years on from those events.
I sit in a different makeshift screening area in my flat bedroom. Though perched high in the sky I imagine, behind the curtains, willow trees and a stream. This is beyond explanation.
*Semi in-joke between twins, referencing Matisse's The Grounds of the Château Noir (National Gallery, London), our touchstone for a concept of solitary artistic delirium.
Wonder here I use both in the sense of bringing surprised joy (some of the films below are simply wonderful) and in the sense that James Ellroy defined it as term in his early novel "Clandestine", and which is found in profusion in his later novels, particularly the famous LA quartet. Wonder which is an ecstatic fascination with the extent of the depravity of others.
I list Cremaster 1 here separately from the other movies in the Cycle as it is the only one below 6.0. In various other lists of mine the Cremaster Cycle is listed as a whole.
Known to have graduated above 5.9 since I started: Un héritier / An Heir (2011 - Jean-Marie Straub).
Known to have graduated in from my all-ratings favourites list by dropping below 6.0: De la guerre / On War (2008 - Bertrand Bonello)
Firm criteria, no international co-productions, and no violations of common sense, to be included a film has to feel British.
List is fully ranked from 1-100.
Red Riding is a series of three movies from three directors, all covering murders in the same part of Yorkshire, but over different decades, all released in successive weeks of 2009. I consider them a complete work (they can be viewed separately or together). The listing of Red Riding Hood 1974 is intended to cover all three.
Reviews
Exordium (2013)
Potent existential sci-fi fantasy short
"Exordium" is a short about a winter warrior on a quest to save his people, who must face a champion at the gate of ancient ruins. Momentous events and a strew of dead bodies lead up to this encounter. It is a hugely evocative piece that seems to plunder happily from the best parts of the science fiction and fantasy canon, all within a compact running time. On the science fiction front, it recalls elements of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and the Strugatsky Brothers' "Hard to Be a God". On the fantasy front, the 1980s "Conan" films, William Morris' "The Well at the World's End", and Václav Svankmajer's short "Svetlonos" come to mind. Animation-wise, it harks back to "Fire and Ice".
Around the turn of the 19th century, William Blake painted "Elohim Creating Adam", a work that, like many people, I have on my wall. The question posed by the painting is a huge 'why?'-why do we exist, what is the greater plan, will we ever understand it, or are we merely victims, crushed under the juggernaut of a fate far beyond our comprehension? In the painting, Adam wears a look of disbelief and woe. This enormous 'why?' is the central theme of "Exordium". If beings greater than us exist, why do they stand by without intervening? As the Strugatskys suggest in "Hard to Be a God", guiding or intervening in less advanced civilisations can be as futile as herding cats-a fool's errand.
In "Exordium", these many influences blend seamlessly, creating a short that brims with dread, wonder, and a haunting sense of 'why?'
The Social Network (2010)
Iconic movie of the era, capturing a magic time and place
The exhilarating feeling that anything is possible, that monumental changes could occur at any moment, is a heady sensation. It's why so many flock to cities like New York, Los Angeles, and London, even though the reality often results in unfulfilled dreams. People want to be where the action is, whatever "it" may be, even if they only end up as spectators-or, in today's online parlance, NPCs.
The backdrop of The Social Network is Harvard in autumn and winter, a place undeniably brimming with potential. These elite institutions generate a palpable atmosphere of being on the cusp of something big, especially as the nights draw in early. You might attend a lecture where Bill Gates makes a rare appearance, or run into Natalie Portman, who was both a student and rising film star during the film's setting. At Harvard, ambition drives students to create the jobs and roles of the future, often leading to decisions to leave before graduation, having outpaced their mentors in vision or been headhunted for startups. Yet despite its forward-thinking ethos, Harvard remains steeped in tradition, serving as a prime networking hub for the youth elite.
Mark Zuckerberg, portrayed as a programming prodigy upon his arrival, is shown to be fascinated by Harvard's traditions, although in real life, he disputes this. His ambition to join a finals club, Harvard's exclusive answer to fraternities, plays a part in the breakdown of his relationship with his ideal woman, the animosity with the aristocratic Winklevoss twins, and the tension with his best friend Eduardo "Wardo" Saverin, who secures a spot in the prestigious Phoenix Club. The film skilfully weaves the theme of elitism into its drama.
As Zuckerberg quickly outgrows the confines of Harvard, he becomes determined to launch a social network, driven by an insatiable ambition. However, two major obstacles stand in his way: his best friend provided the initial funding and holds a significant stake in the company, and the core idea for the site-albeit basic-comes from the Winklevoss twins. With the arrival of the ethically dubious internet wunderkind Sean Parker, Zuckerberg feels empowered to move to California, brushing aside the "inconveniences" of Wardo and the Winklevoss twins. While he views their contributions as minor, the law takes a different stance.
The film expertly balances the perspectives of all the key players in the ensuing legal battles. Saverin's early financial contribution is pivotal, despite Parker's reported high-handed view that it should be treated like debt rather than equity-something to be repaid, rather than converted into ownership. The Winklevoss twins, for their part, come across as remarkably patient and image-conscious. Their physical stature and privileged background put them at risk of being perceived as villains if they misstep, but they adhere to a sense of fair play and an old-fashioned Harvard ethos that restrains them. In the end, they come out looking relatively good, despite not contributing a single line of code to Facebook's development. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, is portrayed as socially awkward, grappling with the role of the ruthless capitalist, yet frequently reining in his more cutthroat instincts.
A critical flaw in the evolution of social media lies in its ranking algorithms, and we are still coming to terms with the consequences today. None of the key figures involved had a deep understanding of human psychology, failing to realise that people are more likely to engage with negative material than positive content. The drive for more engagement leads to feeds saturated with intrusive and unwanted content. Parker, with his devil-may-care attitude towards the effects of disruptive technology, his only objective is to grow the firm and he will ride roughshod to achieve it, he sees the potential of Facebook before anyone else. At one point, he jokingly suggests to his antagonist Eduardo that he should buy a Tower Records franchise in the post-Napster era. I miss those stores-they were cultural oases-and their disappearance illustrates that disruption always comes at a price.
With events like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, election interference, and the invasive nature of social media now under scrutiny, the early missteps of Facebook have led to a kind of panopticon that has eroded mental health. We are still coming to terms with the profound changes set in motion by these sprint innovators.
Om det oändliga (2019)
The insight and the balance between seriousness and humour that defined Andersson's "Trilogy of Life" is missing
In 2007, I watched Roy Andersson's 'You, The Living' in the cinema and fell off my chair laughing. 'About Endlessness', while structurally and formally similar, never matched that experience-eliciting only the occasional wry smile. For decades now, Andersson's films have followed the same assembly line process. Shot entirely in studios with ingenious sets and painted backdrops, his movies are a masterclass in control, with every scene meticulously crafted. Like von Sternberg before him, Andersson is perhaps the last of the 'control freak' directors. He refers to these carefully constructed scenes as 'complex images', where every detail is deliberately composed. Unlike outdoor shoots, where chance and spontaneity can affect the final product, Andersson's studio-based approach ensures that nothing is left to chance, and every visual element reflects his meditation on the human condition. As filmmaker Bruno Dumont once said, "We each and every one of us has a pendulum inside us which goes between grace and idiocy." Andersson's films embody that tension.
Reflecting on 'About Endlessness', I found it difficult to identify scenes that reached the calibre of his earlier films. His pinnacle of "grace" for me remains in 'A Dove Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence', where Limping Lotta serves shots to every man in her bar before they line up for a kiss. Similarly, the tablecloth-pull scene in 'You, The Living' is one of the funniest shocks I've experienced in a film. No scene in 'About Endlessness' delivers the same iconic power.
Some moments in 'About Endlessness' feel like excess baggage. A narrator describes a shameless office manager staring out of a window, but we are merely told, not shown, that she is shameless. Where's the magic that Andersson once conjured? In 'A Dove', he dissected modern fascism by showing Charles XII and his soldiers behaving monstrously in a contemporary bar, shattering the illusion of historical idols. In 'About Endlessness', Andersson revisits fascism through a tableau vivant of Hitler in the Führerbunker (based on a 1948 painting by the Kukryniksy group), but the scene lacks the incisive connection to modern cultural dialogue. Had this been a debut film, it might have been better received, but it comes with the weight of Andersson's legacy.
There are some compelling ideas in 'About Endlessness' that could have been explored further. One of the most intriguing is the replacement of the confessional with the therapist's couch-illustrated when a priest, struggling with his lost faith, seeks help from a therapist instead of his bishop or confessor. It's a symbolic passing of the baton from community guidance to individual reflection. Similarly, the film hints at the concept of endlessness as thermodynamic-a universe where energy persists long after humanity is gone, a secular replacement for the Resurrection. The modern reluctance of bystanders to engage in meaningful ways, fearing backlash in an increasingly polarised world, remains a potent but underexplored theme. Today, more than one Overton Window is open, leaving people unsure of how to interact with strangers who may gravitate toward opposing ideological poles.
While there are minor giggles, 'About Endlessness' lacks the magic, shock, and daring of Andersson's past work. It's possible he succumbed to creative exhaustion, understandable at 76 and struggling with alcoholism. Though it shares the same formal structure as his earlier 'Trilogy of Life', it lacks the visceral impact that made those films memorable.
That said, Andersson hasn't entirely given in to the post-human pessimism seen in the latest work in some of his contemporaries, such as Jonas Mekas. The dancing of the young women in 'About Endlessness' suggests a glimmer of hope-perhaps they represent a future where women's new freedoms are explored, and humanity's future is better stewarded. Or they might evoke the Three Graces of antiquity, symbolising Andersson, in spiritual crisis, finding solace in images of pre-Christian mythology.
Stay (2005)
"There's too much beauty to quit"
Stay is a maximal-effort, maximal-commitment, visionary film from Hollywood, boasting an A-list cast at their prime. It's the kind of project we always ask for: something ambitious and daring, as opposed to the endless parade of safe rehashes, franchise fodder, star-vehicle potboilers, and focus-grouped-to-nothing pap. And yet, Stay was completely ignored during awards season, receiving only one technical nomination at a third-rate ceremony, and it was largely snubbed by audiences-many of whom didn't like, or perhaps didn't fully understand, the ending. So what gives?
Stay follows a tormented young man named Henry, played by Ryan Gosling, who is overwhelmed with guilt and planning to end his life. Various people want him to "stay" alive, hence the film's title. The virtuosity of the production team is apparent almost immediately, as the film is filled with woozy jump cuts and match cuts. A singular uncanny neo-Gotham-ite atmosphere presides, especially through breathtaking high-in-the-sky shots of Manhattan that make the city feel almost otherworldly. The production team goes to great lengths to emphasize this strange, dreamlike quality, as seen in the apartment of Henry's therapist Sam (Ewan McGregor) and his troubled artist partner Lila (Naomi Watts), where every book on their shelves has a black spine. The atmosphere isn't just created by the camera or added in post-production-it's encrusted into every aspect of the filmmaking, from set design to costumes to location choices, even down to the details of the stationery. This group of filmmakers was born ready.
The great Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, toward the twilight of his career that started in the silents, embarked on a film about how to show the wind on screen-Une histoire de vent (1988), released a year before his death. What a treat it would have been for him to see Stay, where the special effects team accomplishes what Ivens felt was impossible: they visualize the wind. These scenes are part of the film's final sequence, which many viewers found narratively problematic. My advice? Rewatch the ending a few times. It hints at far greater things than most have taken away. It's not that the audience is wrong-it's that there's more to uncover.
Without giving away spoilers, I'll say this: Stay is an utterly romantic film that suggests the wind has its own wind, called fate, and that fate is something we can interact with-if we try our utmost.
Los conductos (2020)
Dark intimacy
Los Conductos, or the chosen ones (as in "the thug life chose me"), is a film about a man who leads a mostly solitary sociopathic existence (for sociopathy read "what's mine is mine, what's yours is mine"), he's drug addicted and operating as a member of a homebrew criminal gang with cult features. Los Conductos is not a sensationalist movie, it is neither cheap entertainment nor exploitation. It is a sort of dark collage of feelings by someone who used to live this way, but became sickened, and emerged "black koi". It's also a portrait of civic gangrene.
The film to date has been little seen or remarked upon, save by a small cadre of fanatic curator brethren and crazed head-hunter cinemaniacs, and winning the GWFF Best First Feature prize in Berlin, designed to promote risk takers. This film has been put together by masters of style and form. The framing, editing, and the ability to find raw, unembellished beauty are startling. After viewing a film, it can effect the entire way we see the world, a statue of a beast may come alive and jump from its plinth, you might feel like chattering to the first human you see, or hiding deep in the earth; after Los Conductos I'm having a moment of pure solitary aesthetical wonder, just watching how a spar of light is fluctuating and illuminating a cardboard tube that is leaning against my red chair.
It's dangerous to use the word original to describe a movie, and I hardly ever do so, but Los Conductos does feel like it comes as close as a modern film can.
Whilst I'm tempted to use the word arthouse to describe the movie, I'd rather say that it's a movie where you have to do some work yourself, it's not often clear what is being shown, who everyone is, or the order of events, and you also have to decide if any of these things matter. It's a poem, a puzzle, and a polemic, and there is a certain type of espresso-loving ciné wreckhead whose Christmas tree just lit up reading that.
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut (2023)
Competing and conflicting aims make for a compromised artwork
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is a completely reworked film, assembled from previously unused footage of the infamous 1979 movie about the notorious Roman emperor Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Caligula. Although the reconstruction team does not use any footage from the original theatrical release, many of the scenes feature alternate takes or different sections of the same moments. While this new version excises the gratuitous pornographic footage inserted by producer Bob Guccione-much to the chagrin of the film's other key creatives-it retains a potent sexual atmosphere. Full frontal nudity is pervasive, and people are often objectified, such as in the case of Tiberius' macabre glyptotheque of living sculptures.
At its core, the movie suffers from conflicting ambitions. Guccione aimed for an extravagant, high-production values pornographic spectacle focussing on orgies, while Tinto Brass sought to titillate audiences with his lurid macabre vision of Ancient Rome. In contrast, Gore Vidal intended the film to be a serious political allegory. While the removal of Guccione's contributions cleans up some of the film's excess, it doesn't solve the deeper problem: we are still left with the clashing aims of Vidal and Brass, like two mismatched jigsaw pieces awkwardly fitted together.
At the heart of Vidal's ever relevant political vision is a critique of how power corrupts over time. This is evident in Tiberius' speech at the beginning of the film, where he laments the transformation of Rome from a nation of frugal, hardworking landowners to one ruled by decadent colonial administrators. This speech reflects Vidal's view of Rome's decline into excess, and it's hard not to draw a parallel with the trajectory of the United States. Like Rome, the U. S. shifted from its early ideals to a superpower marked by consumerism and global dominance-a change symbolized by the election of a Hollywood actor as president in 1980, soon after the original Caligula was released. Vidal's critique, even through the filter of a debauched emperor, seems to echo warnings about the corrupting influence of imperial ambitions.
Had Vidal's political concerns been faithfully brought to the centre of the production, Caligula might have had the potential to become a great political film. However, even from the script stage, it was polarizing-Orson Welles, for instance, famously refused to play Tiberius because of his disdain for the material. The tension between Vidal's insights and Brass' vision ultimately weakens the movie's message.
Brass transforms Vidal's script into something far more degenerate, historically inaccurate, and grotesque. While Vidal intended to depict Caligula as a man corrupted by power, both the original and the Ultimate Cut portray him as a monster from the start. The film takes the worst gossip about Caligula from a later era, long subject to suspicion, and presents it as fact. It even invents sensationalist scenes, such as the massive killing machine with rotating blades, adding to the film's over-the-top spectacle. What could have been a chilling political narrative becomes instead a Grand Guignol spectacle.
The new cut offers some redeeming features, notably the striking animated introduction, which counterbalances (or perhaps disrupts, depending on one's tastes) the campiness of the rest of the movie. Yet, the film still lacks dramatic tension. We rarely see any serious opposition to Caligula, which robs the story of any meaningful conflict. The experience of watching Caligula is demoralizing, not just because of the depravity on screen, but because it leaves the audience feeling emotionally drained. After leaving the cinema, I felt disconnected from reality-perceiving people as mere flesh, stripped of their humanity. While Vidal's vision should have been politically energizing, the film instead demoralizes, leaving the viewer emotionally adrift in its spectacle rather than thoughtfully provoked.
The film's use of animals remains problematic and unethical, particularly in the scene where a horse is forced to lie down in bed with Malcolm McDowell, further heightening the grotesque nature of the movie. In the end, Caligula remains a powerful yet deeply flawed film, where any higher artistic or political aims are drowned out by its excessive, often hideous imagery.
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut highlights some worthy impulses whilst feeding our basest instincts for shock and spectacle. The result is a movie that is occasionally insightful, often grotesque, and which remains compromised by the conflicting visions of its creators.
The Dreamers (2003)
Cinema, Politics, and Desire: The Dreamers' Hermetic Microcosm
Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers is an intricate film-set in Paris during the charged atmosphere of May 1968-that is as much a reckoning with cinema as it is a study in erotic obsession and political confusion. There's much to unravel in this provocative film, which melds radical youth culture with an insular world of sensuality, all while casting a shadow of the famous student demonstrations of 1968.
The student demonstrations of 1968 and the cinema had some rather powerful intersections. Those demonstrations that followed the expulsion of the programming guru Langlois from the Cinémathèque weren't just a convenient setting for The Dreamers; they were catalytic for the wider demonstrations. The filmmakers of that time were people that were in a dialogue with radical youth, when Godard made La Chinoise, somewhat of a backhanded compliment to the student movement, he was on the receiving end of the sloganeers' efforts, "Godard, le plus con des suisses pro-Chinois". La Chinoise satirized the student movement, presenting its characters as politically earnest but hopelessly naïve, which earned Godard both admiration and criticism. The brother and sister who make one face of the love triangle in the movie, have in fact installed a poster of La Chinoise in their apartments. Through this reference, Bertolucci hints at the self-awareness of his characters: they recognize they are part of this radical generation, yet they also see the futility in their own politics. Whenever Theo talks revolution, he comes across as insufferably naïve. The Dreamers have the engine for change, but they don't know what they should be doing with it, nor are they very politically active, or as engaged as they think they are. When Isabelle appears to chain herself to the Cinémathèque gate, she is in fact playacting Andromeda, the chain is not connected.
This tension is central to the film. Rather than being a serious political drama, The Dreamers focuses on the intimate, almost hermetic world of Theo, Isabelle, and the American student, Matthew. They are a trio of intelligent, unsupervised, intellectually iffy kids who love to lave their eyes in the light of the cinematheque and to touch each others' bodies. The erotic games in their apartments are hugely fascinating, but also unhealthy, they are both sweet and sickening. It is some achievement to film so much nudity without sagging, and the film manages an iconic erotic moment when Isabelle appears as the Venus de Milo. Still, when Matthew writes home to say he has found, "the right people", it's hard to disagree with him. Life seems boring and insignificant, and most of us would have entered into his situation. Very few of us meet the wrong "right people" let alone the right "right people".
It's also interesting to reflect on how The Dreamers offers a glimpse into what cinema meant to the Bertolucci generation-when one could still wrap one's head around the entirety of the corpus of great films, when watching Garbo's Queen Christina in the theatre was a revelatory experience. While that kind of impact may have waned for today's filmgoers-especially in the era of von Trier and beyond-the film captures a nostalgic longing for a time when cinema was more exotic. Truffaut, frequently quoted in the movie, once said, "It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that cinema saved my life," and this sentiment feels central to The Dreamers. The screen both shields and separates us from the world, providing a place of solace but also passivity-a theme The Dreamers explores this theme with care.
While The Dreamers flirts with the political tensions of 1968, it is more concerned with how cinema defines the inner lives of its characters. It echoes Truffaut's concern with cinema as both salvation and seduction. Though Bertolucci's film may not reach the depths of a film like Jean Eustache's La maman et la putain in addressing the pain of May '68's failure, it presents a hermetic, sexy world where our relationship with cinema is central-reflecting both its beauty and its dangers.
In the end, The Dreamers is a portrait of cinema as both refuge and entrapment, where the erotic and intellectual collide in a fevered microcosm of youth on the verge of revolution, but always remaining trapped within their own dreams.
Starve Acre (2023)
An unfurling of severed roots
It is right from time to time to lay in the dew and wonder about who sung before us, us who sing no more. To wonder about those in the earth and in the air. What did those protestants erase from the page and from our hearts?
This is axiomatic to Starve Acre, a movie about a small family at the centre of resurrected happenings in isolated Yorkshire. Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark both do great work here. They incantate.
Is it right to revisit authentic feelings, mad sorrow and childlike involvement in nature? Would it be right to do these things again? This is not known, but I do know that I walked away from the cinema with hare's ears and my mind's eye fully dilated.
Wayward Fronds (2015)
Wildness
I needed this wildness. I needed the disquiet, the confrontation, this awayness. Civilization is protection, sterile cocooning. Here Silva abruptly confronts with a majestic and byzantine tumult and cycle of nature with no safety. Human spaces are reclaimed, humans metamorphose into merfolk, we rejoin the fray. This experimental short is unmannered, unnarrated, original, it has theatre, trickshots, a discomfort that awakens. It leads me to reveries, to succubi, sirens, a yearning for precipices, to eyries where the air is thin, to sweet terrifying madnesses and incomprehensions. This Fern's fronds are wayward indeed.
New Shores (2012)
Bliss bucket
There are some wonderful moving silhouettes in Jerome Hiler's diary film "New Shores," particularly of huge boulders shot from a train on an inky black night. I'm highlighting this shot not only because it's visually arrsting but also because it's thematically significant, as the film itself revolves around the concept of a journey. It also reminded me of another artist's journey-a rich analogy, perhaps new to this review or perhaps knowingly employed by Hiler. Starting in 1986, the artist Ed Ruscha began painting blurry black-and-white images depicting various iconic aspects of the West in silhouette. As an 18-year-old in 1956, Ruscha drove from Oklahoma to Los Angeles, hoping to learn how to become an artist. The drive was deeply momentous and symbolic for him, providing a source of images he would use for the rest of his career. Interestingly, 1986 marks the end of the period during which Jerome Hiler shot "New Shores," listed in catalogs as 1971-1987, although he has mentioned verbally that footage from the 1990s was included. Here we have two artists with a strong awareness of place, both influenced by journeys and using similar images. I find it intriguing to lay these images side by side and wistfully wonder if Jerome was making a sort of visual quotation of Ruscha's style. It's interesting to consider that both artists were influenced by events 30 years past-Hiler editing this footage together 30 years after he finished shooting most of it, and Ruscha still fascinated by the drive he made into his new life. If the world can't be saved, at least images can be salvaged from it.
The title "New Shores" itself alludes to a journey, as Hiler and his partner, Nathaniel Dorsky (an acclaimed filmmaker in his own right), moved from the Lake Owassa area of New Jersey to San Francisco. This move represents a significant life change-transitioning from the monastic solitude of the New Jersey countryside to the communal melting pot of San Francisco. This shift might symbolize the failure of one dream and the hope for a new beginning. The Lake Owassa period is documented in Hiler's "In the Stone House" and Dorsky's "Hours for Jerome." Since these two projects by Hiler are contiguous and represent distinct diary phases, they can be profitably exhibited together. The title of the movie also references a German film made by Douglas Sirk: "That film also deals with displacement, chasing pleasures to escape the overall atmosphere of imprisonment and a final capitulation." I think the capitulation referred to here is the return to New Jersey.
I had the opportunity to watch both "In the Stone House" and "New Shores" together. I found both films captivating, although "In the Stone House" stood out as my favorite. Perhaps this is because its footage, edited from a shorter period, feels more coherent. On the other hand, "New Shores" dazzles with flashier imagery and more "wow" moments, yet "In the Stone House" possesses a sacred quality that lingers with me.
Given the rarity of screenings and the limited availability of "New Shores" for individual viewing, I'd like to record a few vivid memories from the film in a memory pool: a helicopter winch rescue shot, lowering a crash cradle onto a dangerous shoreline; naked friends lounging in rock pools; massive stone piles revealed as the train rounds a bend; an ecstatic ticker-tape parade superimposed with a rainbow flag; a black cloud seemingly emanating from a container ship, framed by curling waves; the background remains utterly static while the foreground is dynamically alive; fireworks leaping from a trombone in a trick shot; Nathaniel walking up a verdant hill pasture.
While Hiler has described "New Shores" as "a film of useless hopes and baseless fears," the film also conveys a sense of ecstasy-a positive remnant of human existence, with much of its anxiety discarded for the viewer.
In the Stone House (2012)
A retreat
In the Stone House is a very special and intimate diary movie. Apart from the whirring of the projector, a completely silent 35 minute experimental short showing scenes from the lives of Nathaniel Dorksy and Jerome Hiler in the late '60s and early '70s when they left Manhattan and moved to New Jersey. As romantic partners and filmmakers, they explored similar terrains with their Bolex cameras, yet their artistic approaches diverge in subtle but significant ways. Whilst neither movie makers employ sound or narrative, Hiler loves to use superimposition and occasional in-camera editing tricks, adding a touch of Méliès-like magic to his work. In contrast, Nathaniel often seeks abstraction, perhaps aiming to decontextualize imagery until a secret immanence appears. His technique has been distilled to near-purity, following a developmental trajectory similar to Picasso's, making him, in my view, a genius. Hiler's films, to me, are more intimate-wondrous and densely packed with quality images, in contrast to some other filmmakers in the same field, whose works can sometimes feel undermined by longueurs.
The title of the movie, "In the Stone House", has an intriguing origin. Hiler discovered that the police referred to their home as "The Stone House"-a realization that initially seems odd to the contemporary viewer until contextualized within the homophobic climate of 1960s New Jersey, where it was illegal for men to live together as a couple. The police likely kept a file on these two gentle souls, who lived their lives in a hermetic, non-confrontational manner.
Both Hiler and Dorsky rarely screen their films outside of infrequent, special one-off cinema showings, making the experience of viewing them especially reverential. The cinema becomes a temple. There's an image in one of Hiler's films where a woman is shown wearing a pair of flip up glasses where the flip up parts are made of celluloid. She is a member of the tribe who these films are made for. Hiler and Dorsky have described this period of their lives as monastic; they retreated to the countryside to live contemplatively, and we're fortunate that they chose to share the highlights of this time through their wonder-filled films. If you ever get the chance to see "Hours For Jerome", Dorsky's diary film from the same period, it's a must-see, another cinematic miracle from the Lake Ossawa area.
To preserve the experience of "In the Stone House", I took notes on the images (mostly in my order of recollection rather than chronologically), as rewatches are almost impossible. Some of these images are printed in Illuminated Hours: The Early Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler:
The first opens with stone steps bathed in ponds of light, framed in darkness. Winter shots out of rectangular slots. Heavy snow storm in a metropolitan street. Sneakers going round in a phantom ride on a fairground swing superimposed on daily life. Sacred landscapes at dusk. A Stone buddha in the dark with flowers and plants edited in camera around the edges. Numerous images of Nathaniel appear, the most loving being a green frog superimposed on his body. A Méliès moment unfolds when a blue lens is lifted at a lakeside, revealing a portal to fantastic mythical figures in the city. A freight train rides a viaduct over a city street; the scene, shot from a moving vehicle, captures three layers of motion. Manhattan glows in pink and red. There is a ticker tape parade. Women in interiors wear vibrant, multi-colored blouses. A close-up of a stone-colored viper with an arrow-shaped head evokes awe. The camera delves into stony crevices. Photography taken by a lake show the filmmakers setting up their cameras to capture an eclipse, then eclipse footage capturing light streaming down the canyons of the moon-a phenomenon known as Baillie's Beads.
With "In the Stone House", Hiler gives us intimate glimpse into his and Nathaniel's lives and creative processes. The film is a testament to the power of visual storytelling, where every frame is imbued with a quiet, almost mystical significance.
Davandeh (1984)
Spiritual octane
"The Runner" follows Amiro, a young boy living on his own on a beached rustbucket in an Iranian port city. Amiro, like young boys all over the world is fascinated by ships, planes and trains, he revels in them, particularly aeroplanes. He wishes to better himself, and throws himself into learning to read, making friends, adorning his sleeping area, and exercising to run faster.
The strength of this story is Amiro's pure physical energy, moral energy, energy for commerce, and energy to make friends on their terms. This all culminates in a huge and iconic crescendo at the end which involves a race between flaring oil wells. It is a staggering scene.
I don't think I have seen such life force in a film before, it is all about picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and going again. So much chimed with me, and it felt like a blueprint for masculinity: competition without snideness or subjugation, comradeship, a yearning for justice for yourself and others, a "can do" attitude, houseproudness, and a thirst for knowledge. Naderi also displays a keen eye for the beauty of the world, for example bobbing glass bottles in the sea. Beauty is always available to us if we stop thinking of things in terms of their properties or their place in an imaginary order, if we just let ourselves be fascinated by shifting colours.
This film will live forever.
Analogies No. 1 (1953)
Swim into the eye palace
A film of experimental light play in two halves, first we have images of distortion from the outdoors, trees and architecture reflected in water, secondly we have rippling effects created indoors, in Davis' workroom. Analogy here is the practice of placing one the one half alongside the other. A beautiful chromatic piece of music accompanies the ten-minute short. In the first half some of the more abstract patterns take their beauty as much from the ripples of darkness as from the light, just as the beauty of music lies in the silence between the notes. Windows from red brick buildings become anfractuous portals beckoning us to swim into the eye palace. The second half, to this machine, seem to be a mixture of cosmic pondering, and when metallic surfaces are used, highly dynamic conspiracies. There is indeed some power and merit in juxtaposing the natural and the artificial, leaving this viewer in a befuddled jouissance.
Saraband (2003)
Life's ungraspability
In Saraband, we reunite with Marianne and Johan, the ex-spouses from Bergman's iconic Scenes from a Marriage, now thirty years older, with the original actors reprising their roles. Time has brought them a quiet resignation, a sense of acceptance tinged with occasional tremors of the unresolved. Johan remains as puzzled by life's purpose as ever, while Marianne is still grappling with the enigma of love. The film not only reveals the fates of these characters but also introduces us to new ones-Johan's son Henrik and granddaughter Karin-adding layers of complexity to the narrative. Saraband stands on its own, yet it engages in a profound dialogue with its predecessor. The interplay between the two films creates a rich irony that would be missed without knowledge of both.
The first irony emerges in Marianne's journal reflections in Scenes, counterposed to the failure of Johan's reactive parenting style. Marianne reads an interesting passage from her therapy journal in Scenes from a Marriage, where she talks about how her parents spent too much effort coercively shaping her, and this is true for Johan as well. This means they never really got to be the authentic versions of themselves. However, in Saraband, we see what happens when a parent takes no interest, specifically with Johan's aging son Henrik. Johan never bonded with his son and took little interest. The result is a misshapen man with attachment issues who wishes vile and protracted death upon his father but who also strives as much as he can to keep things together and kind. The pattern of overcontrol from two generations before then re-emerges in Henrik's suffocating relationship with his daughter, Karin.
Next, there's the contrast in how Scenes and Saraband treat the theme of contentment. In Scenes, we regularly hear fatness and contentment spoken of side by side, and Johan wishes he could have been like a portly relative who led a simple, happy life running a small-town toy shop. However, in Saraband, we find that Henrik is mercilessly judged by his father for being overweight. This arbitrary cruelty speaks to the harsh realities of familial relationships and raises existential questions, particularly in the brief scene where Marianne visits her daughter Martha, who suffers from a degenerative brain condition. It forces us to ask: What are we doing bringing children into a world so fraught with pain? It cannot be enough of an excuse to bring a child here simply to correct the errors of one's own upbringing.
Finally, there's Johan's unseemly obsession with the "unfairness" of his son marrying a wonderful woman. What we know from Scenes, in particular, is that Johan is far better treated than he deserves to be by women, loved even though he talks gibberish to them as if ladling soup from a tureen of wisdom. He is a learned fool, an emotional illiterate-to quote a scene title from the first movie-a bore and a horrendous father (but still a human being).
Saraband also has an experimental quality. A key character never appears except in photographs and testimonies, and Johan's housekeeper is another unseen yet intriguing presence. Marianne's direct address to the camera breaks the fourth wall, adding another layer of complexity to the film's narrative style. There are many different ways of conversing with one's audience. The movie also moves with the times, and you see the hints of wild, inappropriate anger and crassness that characterize the increasingly secular, God-unfearing world. And yet, almost in defiance of the times, Bergman infuses the film with mystical elements, drawing the viewer into an exploration of the divine, much like how the film's use of J. S. Bach's music suggests glimpses of higher truths (as Henrik remarks).
The relationship between Henrik and Karin, marked by a disturbing undercurrent of incestuous tension, is both fascinating and troubling. Julia Dufvenius shines as Karin, a teenage cellist striving to find her authentic self amidst her father's overwhelming influence. She has become the little wife of a father she both loves and fears.
In the end, Saraband casts a long shadow over 21st-century cinema, making other films seem trivial by comparison. Bergman's final directorial work, especially when counterposed with Scenes from a Marriage, is a haunting and lingering meditation on social history, life's complexities, and the cyclical nature of familial dysfunction.
Scener ur ett äktenskap (1973)
Universal
The TV miniseries of Scenes from a Marriage lasts 6 episodes and 5 hours, each episode ending with a calming landscape shot of Fårö lest a too-close-to-the-bone episode leave you in need of settling. It follows the middle of the lives of the couple Marianne and Johan, whose names may rhyme but whose desires and ambitions are less synchronised. The journey of these two is a vehicle that provides a leisurely unfurling of universal truths. For those not sated, the same director and two leading actors remarkably return 30 years later with Saraband (2003) to provide a coda to the story. It's also worth referring viewers to Faithless (2000), which was directed by Liv Ullman (who plays Marianne here), on a script by Ingmar Bergman. In that film you can see the fallout of divorce on the children (Scenes from a Marriage doesn't go down that avenue), and you can even get a flavour of the adulterous tryst to Paris (only spoken of in Scenes from a Marriage); all three of these movies draw from Bergman's own experiences.
This miniseries is conversational, and unafraid to follow conversations for the same amount of time as they occur in real life. The main lesson received by the characters is just how shaped their lives were by their parents' rigorously enforced expectations, and just how disastrous it was to follow those expectations. The fourth episode is particularly touching as we see photos of the two from childhood to young adulthood photos, while the method of their destruction is described (hilariously Johan falls asleep whilst listening to this crucial monologue). Another issue is that, whilst a couple can legally separate, there is an invisible red rope that ties them together, this can never be severed. Marjo, if you'll allow me a crudity, do eventually find some comfort in this and finish up the film snuggling in bed.
Bergman is well aware of life's bewilderment and that each of us has only a small time during a progressive revelation (cf. The speech at the end of Fanny and Alexander), whilst it feels like Marianne and Johan do find out much about life, they merely escape from a prison into another wider prison. How many doors are there to be broken down? Maybe some thousand years hence or even aeons, the answer will be known, or maybe there are just doors. Generations of parents have found various rocks to latch onto, a hundred years ago it was stoic religiosity, then secular bourgeois ideals, supplanted in their turn by post-modernism, and now atomisation and absurd sex. A life maybe is a time and place where one attempts to paint a marvellous fresco that reveals the Godhead, but in fact where all one succeeds in doing is tripping over the paint cans. Remarkably, we carry on creating new generations despite the deepening of the coastal shelf (to channel Larkin). Bergman's miniseries was widely seen and had a huge impact on Swedish society. It is a film but also an accomplishment that goes beyond the cinema.
Tonari no Totoro (1988)
A trip back along the overgrown path to childhood
The Kusakabe family moves to the countryside to be closer to their mother, who is resting patiently in a sanatorium. Sisters Satsuki and Mei are immediately delighted by their idyllic new surroundings. As they explore their new home, their experiences are filled with joy and excitement, tinged with moments of suspenseful fear. Despite having every reason to be glum, the family instead embraces an energetic positivity, which even leads them to shout back at a storm during a family bath. While their father is occupied with his book work, the sisters encounter a series of iconic supernatural events.
The film is a breath of fresh air, showcasing values such as bravery, curiosity, and kindness. These themes are woven into the sisters' daily lives, whether by lending a helping hand (like preparing packed lunches when their father forgets), Satsuki fearlessly searching for her sister, or discovering the benefits of healthy, harm-less eating in Granny's vegetable garden.
Several aspects distinguish My Neighbour Totoro from other similarly plotted movies about families coping with a sick or absent parent. There are no antagonists in the movie-Miyazaki proves that you can have drama without conflict. There are no nasty neighbors or brawling monsters. The visual storytelling is faultless, with Miyazaki's attention to cinematic framing rivaling that of live-action cinematographers. In this film, Miyazaki-san has found his way back along the overgrown path to his childhood, presenting it not as something distant or other, but as something deeply personal.
I once visited the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, near Tokyo, where there's a soft-play Cat Bus, the iconic invention from this movie. If you have young children, they'll love it. As an adult, you'll find joy exploring Miyazaki-san's study, filled with picture books from around the world that served as inspiration for his movies. Be sure to book well in advance, and I hope you can visit one day if you haven't already.
Yannick (2023)
Humorous and mildly unnerving attack on upper middle class liberal culture
At 67 minutes length Dupieux's comedy of manners never gets a chance to outstay its welcome. Despite some of the anti-audience sentiments displayed in his cult classic "Rubber" (2010), about a murderous car tyre (I can't believe I just typed those words), we do find him looking after his audience here.
Yannick is a security guard from the burbs who takes a valuable night off to go see a play in central Paris. When he realizes that the play is a piece of sullen middle class scatology, he flips his lid and takes the theatre hostage. I was drawn briefly to wonder what he was expecting from a play called "The Cuckold", it appears in his extreme naivete that he might have been expecting to see some sort of slapstick take on infidelity. I do not think he was a frequent flyer at this particular establishment. In my youth I worked night and weekend shifts, and it is indeed very difficult to have a social life and see the various curiosities and entertainments on offer, not just because of timetabling but also lack of disposal income. So, despite his felonious actions, it is fairly easy to feel sympathetic to Yannick.
Yannick is somewhat of an uneducated rube who would typically lose an argument, even if he was right. At gun point people are forced to be somewhat more open and are less able to scoff or run rings round him than they might otherwise be. The audience and players find it difficult to dodge his suddenly quite wide ranging critiques, which go beyond simply the quality of the play and contain some sort of Marxist-adjacent home-baked philosophizing. One of the traits of his prior movie "Incredible But True" that I really enjoyed was that Dupieux knows (most filmmakers don't know anything about office culture), that many office laptop jockeys spend an inordinate amount of time mucking about. Here an audience member is forced to reveal an embarrassing sexualized password and has a saucy desktop wallpaper, maybe he missed the sexual harassment training at work? Maybe one day labourers work out that many "wfh" bureaucrats are clocked off, slippers off, and perfecting the art of espresso making, on multiples of labourer salary. This kind of class dynamic is something that Yannick is close to unravelling, and he is doing so whilst holding a gun.
The movie is a midly chilling chiselling away at the cosmetics of contemporary culture amongst the liberal middle classes. Lift up a log and all sorts of creepy crawlies are underneath. Yannick creates the type of play he would like to see and it's actually quite moving to see him weep as something he has created is enacted. It's a movie that questions one's assumptions and the status quo, it's bright and breezy and well worth your time.
Alma's Rainbow (1994)
Flamboyant comedy
Alma Gold runs a neighbourhood beauty parlor from her home, and concentrates on chivvying along her staff and her teenage daughter Rainbow. Alma is a little serious, maybe even a stickler. Enter Alma's sister Ruby, a minor yet glorious celebrity who made her name playing Josephine Baker in a biographical play, but is struggling to find the work she needs to fund her extravagant lifestyle. Mizan Kirby has an absolute ball as the wild and high maintenance Ruby who quickly puts stars in the eyes of her niece, and attempts to shake up Alma's life. They settle into being a quirky and squabbling family unit.
What is very nice is that the movie a gentle one where conflict levels never rise to a level that might cause unease to the viewer. The set is mostly Alma's house, which is covered in dark wood panelling, plants, sumptuous and exotic paintings that pull you in, feather boas, and antiques, it's a decadent haven. It's a movie that focusses on the life of three Black women (ok one of them is a teenager who thinks she is a woman), their hopes, dreams, and worries, and we see how the women talk when they're with other women and that's pretty rare for the cinema. The big music, big dancing and big laughs will stay with me (Rainbow's lusty dreams were the funniest). It was a great benefit to see it on the big screen, so I could almost feel like I was sat in Alma's house.
Drylongso (1998)
Love, Death, and Photography in 90s Oakland
Drylongso is an American dialect word that refers to the African American way and experience of going about ordinary life. In this film, however, "ordinary" includes the all-too-common deaths of young Black men. Pica, played by Toby Smith in her only film role, is a young artist from Oakland who photographs young Black men to create a record of them before they die. The pace of violent death in the community is so rapid that she quickly amasses a celluloid reliquary.
This movie serves a social purpose while also documenting the artistic process. It emphasizes the procedural aspects of art - printing invitations to exhibitions, asking permission to take photos, finding spaces to showcase the work - highlighting the necessary over the ecstatic. In this way, it's more honest than most films about an artist's journey.
The love story between Pica and Malik is beautifully depicted, with easy chemistry between the characters. Malik, a winsome young man who sells his own awesome t-shirts, captures Pica's interest. However, there is a sad aspect, Pica refrains from photographing him, fearing it might jinx him, she expects him to die. Pica's friendship with the more well-off Tobi explores the nature of "sistahood" and the impact of male appearance. Toby Smith brings an energy and bounce to her role that makes it surprising she didn't appear in more films. Her presence elevates this movie about a tireless neophyte observer in 90s Oakland, a place full of culture, vibrant colors, politics, music, life, and too much death.
Drylongso is a love story, it is a testament to a time and place, it is a celebration of woozy color combinations, it is a movie about making art, and it is a piece of activism. It should have reached many more eyes.
Banshun (1949)
A Sacred Exploration of Social Motive and Bonds in a Small Family and Community
Banshun (Late Spring) is a film about the emotional tension marking the end of a period of easy domesticity enjoyed by a father and his adult daughter in post-war Japan. Their sanctuary of household bliss, of charming equilibrium and mutual attentiveness, is ended by the social pressure to marry. This pressure is applied by a meddling aunt and a pushy friend. The title reflects Noriko's "late" marriage according to societal norms of the time and place, although she is hardly old.
How does a scenario so simple become so well regarded? It comes down to the pleasure one gets from sensing life's subtle harmonies, like watching the swaying of trees or hearing distant piano practice. Ozu, his players, and his crew have a sense of fittingness in gesture, shot, and pace. There are regular players here like Setsuko Hara, Chishû Ryû, and Kuniko Miyake, who you feel privileged to simply be able to watch.
Noriko (Hara) has a beautiful vivacity and kindness, although her sensitivity can be a burden. She overreacts to impurity, such as when she criticizes a family friend who is a widower for remarrying or suffers an emotional crumple when her father nods to an acquaintance at a Noh performance. As audience members, Ozu and Hara deeply invest us in Noriko, making us feel every emotion she experiences.
Why does Noriko's friend want her to marry? Is it for complicity's sake or darker reasons? Is she thinking, "I shan't let you get away with staying unmarried"? Are choices less regrettable when you convince your friends to make the same choices? It is tempting to think this, although the respect and kindness she later shows to Shukichi (the father) indicate she may have had better intentions-a balance of feelings and objectives. One wonders if another typically unspoken emotion is at play here, such as wishing someone else's father was your own. These types of liminal yearnings are what Ozu can stir, the types of motives he and Kogo Nada can uncover.
In the 1930s, French filmmaker Marcel Pagnol similarly explored the dynamic of a parent and child as a couple in his Marseilles trilogy, highlighting the narrative power of such relationships. Recognizing these narrative fulcrums distinguishes master storytellers like Ozu and Pagnol from others.
Every Ozu enthusiast has their own favorite of favorites. Banshun is a great movie, although I prefer Akibiyori (Late Autumn), which redevelops the same themes with a mother and daughter this time, and more comic relief. Ozu is more forthright in the later movie; it really feels like splitting the parent-child pairing up in that movie is a crime, whereas in Banshun it is presented perhaps as more of a necessary evil. In Banshun, Shukichi recalls that his wife was often found crying in the early stages of their marriage. One wonders what those tears hide-are they the tears of a queer person forced into marriage by intense desire to keep family happy? The room to speculate is wide. In the end, old Shukichi convinces Noriko to marry with a lie. Is this the most honourable or the most dishonourable act of his life? The results suggest that he gets away with it. Noriko appears, in the glimpse we are afforded, to be taking to her new role-a success by chance.
Ozu's Banshun remains a poignant exploration of societal expectations and personal sacrifice, brought to life through a mastery of cinematic practice.
Coming Out (1989)
Awakening
Coming Out is the story of a young male teacher in East Berlin who is discovering his sexuality. It is a work not only of social importance, but also an impeccably crafted film with great production values. Both starting and ending scenes are statement scenes that leave an impression. The acting is superb throughout and the film world is Berlin grunge gorgy. I cannot in all honesty, find any fault with any aspect of it. There are just very nice old school techniques like getting the protagonist to write his name on the blackboard so we don't forget. As an audience member you are well taken care of when you watch this movie.
It's also very even handed, Philipp's initial love interest Tanja is astonishingly attractive as a flawless young adult who has got her stuff together, an emotionally enticing, loving, exciting character who most men would do anything to be with. Apfelsaft fur Dagmar Manzel as I believe they say in Germany, she did a incredible acting job. Philipp and Tanja works, it's beautiful, they're social, they have style, they have a scene, they have friends, and they have chemistry. However, as we see when Philipp enters a queer bar, there is something enticing and kaleidoscopic that is a stronger gravitational pull for him.
He makes the mistakes that would be common for the confused off-piste closeted-to-self bisexual of the period when hesitantly breaking taboos with other men. His touching love story with Matthias opens the next chapter in his life, one in which he will be fighting against society to be himself.
Coming Out is an electrifying treat and a reminder of times gone by when things were harder for queer folk in Western Europe (and in one electric bar scene we are reminded of when it was even harder, in the 1940s).
Juntos (2009)
Slow and intimate cinema from Mexico
Juntos is gorgeous, a film about three youths living together in an apartment in Mexico City during the Summer. They lose their dog companion and have problems with their appliances. It sounds like nothing, but the director does various clever things like using the broken appliances to give the viewer various hot and cold sensations that carries one into the movie's reality. The cast and crew work together to create a film that is beautifully intimate. We find out what it feels like to be young and feeling a bit underwhelmed and abandoned, and yet still having each other. It's a film where you feel almost in bed with the characters. The content is in the really lush unmannered camerawork and in the splendid non verbal acting. Eventually we go out on a nice walk to find the doggo.
Peak slow cinema that will hopefully one day be rediscovered by more people than just lil' ole me.
Tini zabutykh predkiv (1965)
Iconic folk tale
Sergei Parajanov's Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors showcases an extraordinary visual style, thanks in large part to Yuri Ilyenko's unbelievably fluid camera work. Together, they craft a vital and dream-like retelling of a Ukrainian folk tale. After this collaboration Ilyenko goes his own way and Parajanov changes to filming tableaux with a static camera (to even greater acclaim).
The film tells a remarkably simple "boy meets girl" story set in the deep Carpathian past. While the camera work and hyper-complex visual sequences are jaw-dropping - far surpassing the capabilities of most cineastes - I was left with a slightly empty feeling. This is because the narrative is essentially a short story that takes almost 100 minutes to play out, and I rather wish this had been the first story in a short anthology or brace of stories of the same length. The source material, Michael Kotsiubinsky's novelette of the same name, has only 34 pages of text in a rather padded out volume. Neither can it really be said that Ivan and Marichka are subject to much or even any character development. I wonder if Parajanov had attempted to do in film what had been done in a ballet of the same source a few years previously. A sort of "challenge accepted" to prove the superiority of film.
Whilst filmed in local dialect and with an abundance of care and detail, Professor Ian Christie remarks that the local reception was not warm. At this distance in time we don't know if this was pique that a Georgian of Armenian descent, an outsider, had made such an effortless work of Ukrainian lore, whether they were not ready, or whether the tonality of this story is just wrong to locals. We also find that whilst the wider Soviet film critical community welcomed the movie, it played only a few theatres in Moscow and was occasionally met with derision.
My second sticking point with the movie is the way animals are treated, you really shouldn't throw a sheep into a raging torrent just because you are making a movie. Movies, as golden as they are, justify very little.
Still, let's emphasize that this camerawork is unparalleled, and I cannot think of much like it until Aleksey German astonishes with Khrustalyov, mashinu! / Khrustalyov, My Car! More than three decades later. The movie romped all over the international scene winning awards left, right and centre, so what do I know?
Du li shi dai (1994)
Comedy of a Metropolis
The movie begins with a printed discussion between Confucius and his disciples about how to solve society's problems. The answer is material enrichment, but what happens once people are enriched? This film attempts to answer that question as a group of yuppie friends navigate the throbbing and prosperous metropolis of Taipei in the 90s.
Released the same year as this movie, Blur's song "Girls and Boys" captures the fast pace and vigorous ways youngsters were finding to interact in the "streets like a jungle," with the chorus ending, "Always should be someone you really love." In this movie, the various superficial yet often powerful youngsters interact as if in a formal baroque dance, swinging between partners in love, business, and friendship. Molly and Qiqi (petulant PR firm CEO and people-pleasing schoolfriend assistant) stand out as the two someones who have their ups and downs but are the ones who really love each other.
While the vapidity of wealth, wealth chasing, and convenience threaten to banalize these pampered and cantankerous business youths, a sense of heart remains that keeps them in the seductive city trap in which they are all caught. Although "Confucian Confusion" is an original script, it feels like it could have been a novel. It places such value in the formal weaving together of each character's story that it almost feels Austen-like. Notably, although almost all of these tyros are known to one another, we never see them all together. It is the viewer, not the participants, who has the God's eye view of proceedings.
An excellent comedy from Yang, "Confucian Confusion" precedes his rise to international recognition, yet it is by no means a lesser work.
Enys Men (2022)
Experimental Horror Movie with a Great Sense of Place
Mark Jenkins became a mini sensation in the UK with his film "Bait" (2019), which depicts the clash between posh holidaymakers and a salt-of-the-earth local in a Cornish village. "Bait" felt authentically Cornish, examining the ingrained rage of a rancorous fisherman. It was a fairly straightforward narrative film that became a mini cult classic due to its accurate, observational, and importantly, humorous ethnography (or local colour, if we are being less formal).
Jenkins followed it up with "Enys Men," or "Isle of Stone," a film that follows a middle-aged botanist scientifically observing protected flowers on an island off the coast of Cornwall. The lack of foliage and unusual red stamens suggest the flowers were created for the movie. Her habits have a ritual quality that the film exploits, generating an oneiric rhythm as the island begins to speak to her.
"Enys Men," like "Bait," also feels Cornish to its bones but contrasts as a pure piece of experimental ecosophical horror, veering far from the straightforwardness of Jenkins's previous film. Ecosophy involves placing social struggles in the context of the local biological and geological environment. In "Enys Men," this manifests as the protagonist seeing visions of past workers of the island (miners, milkmaids, lifeboat crew), the hovering wildlife above the heathland, and various marine and meteorological wonders. The film presents the whole island as a living organism speaking through the woman with visions.
This is a movie of often staggering beauty that offers both harmony and crescendo, appealing to those who appreciate a film as an investigation rather than a traditional narrative tale.