The Consequences of Love (Le conseguenze dell’amore) first published by EyeforFilm As Titta (Toni Servillo) watches impassively through the window of his hotel room, a suited man in the traffic island below, distracted by the sight of a passing woman, walks smack bang into a lamppost. With simple economy, this scene near the beginning of…
Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)/Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987) first published as the 114th instalment of my Cinema Psychrotonicum column “Everything he’s been doing has a kind of logic to it – once you understand what he’s gone through.” So says Sister Margaret (Gilmer McCormick) of her former ward Billy Chapman (Robert Brian…
In Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc), the titular ‘banging’ and ‘porn’ come front-loaded, if heavily qualified. For the film opens cold in the middle of an amateurish if energetic POV sex tape in the making, as a woman in a pink wig engages in a range…
An African-American man staggers though a dark alleyway, clutching – and punching at – his own head. He collapses, gets up, reels about like someone intoxicated, or perhaps a zombie, his hands and the back of his jacket bloody. Bent over and in obvious distress, unsteady and unstable, he lies down in the road, and…
El Apego (aka The Attachment Diaries) opens with a tracking shot that follows, from behind, a pair of legs in high heels, walking along a roughly cobbled pavement in heavy rain at night. This is pure film noir – an impression greatly aided by the strict monochrome presentation – yet this woman’s progress is intercut…
Climbing (Keul-la-i-ming) screens at the London Korean Film Festival, 18 Nov, 2021 In Climbing (Keul-la-i-ming), developed from writer/director Kim Hye-mi’s debut project for the Korean Academy of Film Arts’ feature animation course, Choi Se-hyeon (voiced by Kim Min-ji) is under a lot of pressure. A solo climber absolutely committed to her craft and hoping to…
Shortbus first published by musicOMH, 1 December 2006 Ever since Woody Allen came along with his Annie Hall (1977) and his Manhattan (1979), his Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and his Husbands and Wives (1992), New York has been established as the American city of the ensemble romantic dramedy, where different characters come together to discuss love, life and politics. Witness…
The Book Of Fish screened at the London Korean Film Festival 2021. Below is a transcript of my on-screen introduction, and of my programme note. Director Lee Joon-ik’s The Book Of Fish (Jasaneobo) is not only set for the most part in a littoral, liminal space where land meets sea, but it also deftly lets…
Aloners screened at the London Korean Film Festival 2021. Below is a rough transcript of my live introduction to the festival screening, and also my programme note. Welcome to this evening’s screening of writer/director Hong Seong-eun’s Aloners (Honja saneun saramdeul), which has already won its lead Gong Seung-yeon best actress prizes at Jeonju Film Festival…
New York Ninja is a time capsule, but then so are all films. Even a newly released title will have been in development typically for years, during which it will have accrued and embedded layers of its own recent history in the making. Look further afield, to films made a decade, or decades, or even…
Twenty-something fraternal twins Sarah (Amelia Dudley) and Spencer Moss (Taylor Turner) are articulate, acerbic and thirsty (in every sense) – but they are also missing something. For having grown up in foster homes and never known their parents, they are wayward lost souls, longing to fill the gap in their life story – and on…