Writing on all aspects of Film.
In spite of the unending calamity of the 2020s, films, books and television have still kept me going throughout 2022. Here are my highlights. Film Throughout the period of December 2021 to December 2022, I’ve watched just over 270 films. In general, I’ve focussed on my usual deep dive into the handful of national cinemas that I’m really invested in, though this year has seen … Continue reading 2022 Review
2021 has been a strange year. I’ve found it harder than 2020, in spite of getting more work and generally doing more things as we (briefly) returned to normal. It still just didn’t sit right. Perhaps it was simply because my previous years have been focussed around big projects coming out like book releases and this year was characterised by sitting on one until its … Continue reading 2021 Review
In what has undoubtedly been a cursed year, I have been thankfully kept sane by a number of things, namely films and books but also a few other outlets of frustration. Suffice to say, when you’re taking solace from a hobby for which the tagline is ‘In the grim darkness of far future, there is only war’, you can bet it has been a pretty … Continue reading 2020 Review
The London of my mind’s eye is still shabby and industrial. It is not built on the reality of its modern identity but from its documentation and portrayal in older books, television and film, even more so than ever due to lockdown. This London is not one filled with looming, luxury high-rises like the horrors in Nine Elms, nor is it the city that turned … Continue reading Trailer: Factory (Derek Raymond) – LWT, 1976
Chantal Akerman’s first series of features in the 1970s have one defining aspect in common: all are suffused with loneliness. In her first fiction feature, Je Tu Il Elle (1974), a character wanders between lovers old and new but is always confused as to what she really wants. In Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975), we follow a woman trapped in the monotony of … Continue reading All The Lonely People: Chantal Akerman’s Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978)
This is an edited transcript of a talk given at Norwich Castle on Tuesday the 27th of August 2019. Detail has been edited, aspects taken out and points clarified from the original talk. My thanks to Dr. Nick Warr and Philippa Comber in particular for the help and information given both before and after the talk. Introduction Considering the wealth of imagery on the walls … Continue reading Echoes & Imprints: Towards A Sebaldian Cinema
New Releases Happy End – Michael Haneke Faces Places – Agnès Varda The Antigone – Tacita Dean Let The Sunshine In – Claire Denis You Were Never Really Here – Lynne Ramsay I don’t get to the cinema much these days, being both skint and constantly nervous of Dolby Surround Sound which sadly gives rise to anxiety attacks. However, these are the best films I’ve … Continue reading 2018 Review
Marguerite Duras lived in the Hôtel des Roches Noires in Trouville on the Normandy coast for over thirty years, spending long periods of time there from 1963 to 1996. She would stare out of the window towards the horizon line or at least was photographed often staring out of the window towards the horizon line. Though undoubtedly here at all different seasons, the Trouville coast … Continue reading Winter Waves: Marguerite Duras And Trouville
For a while after watching Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse (The Beautiful Troublemaker, 1991), I repeatedly heard the sound of ink scratching from a nib onto rough paper and canvas. This action occurs throughout the almost four hour long film, to the point where the process of painting – from its earliest preparatory sketches to a devilish, unseen final canvas – feels almost conveyed in … Continue reading Accumulation in Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse (1991)
One of my favourite moments from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is not a typical choice considering the film’s many infamous scenes. Rather than showers, murders and other more memorable images, I particularly love a relatively bland scene later on in the film. It has narrative development in its eerie punch line but has little else on screen in terms of Hitchcock generally: it is perfunctory … Continue reading Horror’s Pleasure of Distance
Celluloid Wicker Man 