Shock Corridor

Howdy. I've been thinking about doing this post for a while, but for one reason or another I shied away from it, I'm still not convinced that it isn't gruesomely self-indulgent - but it has got some film stuff in it. I'm sorry for the size of it (something I've had to say way too often in my life in various situations). Right if you're still here - I have Aspergers. I'm very low on the scale and some people oddly take great delight in telling me that I don't have it at all and some even get pissed off about it, no idea why that should be. This is by no means a "Hey every body feel sorry for me" post, or a "let me off for being a prick, I'm special" post because I'm not and nobody should. I am happy with Aspergers, or at least I'm happy knowing that I have Aspergers, as Paddy Considine said when he was diagnosed fairly recently,  'It's allowed me to make sense of so many things I didn't understand before - an...

I'm going to try and arrange letters in such a way that you'll get an idea of why I think Brief Encounter  (David Lean, 1945) is one of the greatest films I've ever seen (to give this claim some frame of reference I draw your attention to the fact that I have seen in excess of 17 films). This kinda feeds from my last post in a way, as too long ago now I visited Cranforth station in Lancashire, the main setting of Brief Encounter , it wasn't planned and when the opportunity came up I was genuinely excited. When we got there, I squealed and ran around taking poorly composed photographs, and looking at memorabilia, and strongly fighting the urge to sit and watch the film that was about to begin on a small TV in the station, and drinking tea through a big soppy grin, and pretty much everyone else didn't care. It was there though that I realised just how much I really cared about this film and when I came back I gushed at folk and foisted poorly co...

Tony Leung and Maggie Chung in In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2001) Wong Kar-Wai I am often asked what my favourite film is, to which I generally reply - "Pffft!". I know! Why people ever ask me anything is quite beyond me too. But my reason for mentioning that particular flaw in my character is that while it seems utterly out with my ability to choose a particular favourite, or indeed to respond to the question in a civil, adult and mannered way, I do have a list. This list may grow and shrink over time, but in 2001 I added a film to it and it has been there ever since. In the Mood for Love was a defining moment for me and my connection to cinema. This movie more than most underlined the notion that what particularly moves me is film form; rather than just character, narrative or singular technical aspects, it is the collision of these things that resonates for me in film and makes them stay with me. Tony Leung in the sumptuous In the Mood for Love The fi...

What's all that about then? What's all that about!? What's it not about more like! It is life and love and death. A beautiful collage of everything that makes life beautiful, scary, exciting, frustrating, wonderful, angering, reassuring and unsettling; a visual poem that is at it's best when the narrative is sidelined for montage. The sequence surrounding the birth and infant years of the son is quite staggering. Terrence Malick has always liked trees and this film is no different, lots of lovely low angle shots up through the branches, splitting the light in kaleidoscopic shards. The fractured light might be seen as symbolic for the contradictions that shaped the man; a beautiful whole pulled in different directions, both mystifying and simple. A complex work of tremendous beauty that may be wonderfully profund and delicate, or maddeningly boring and pretentious. Go on, find out. J

Drive (2011) the new film by Nicolas Winding Refn is (perhaps expectedly) a dark, violent, brooding affair but (perhaps unexpectedly) one with a great deal of heart. At Cannes, the film garnered a Palme d'Or nomination and picked up the Best Director award for...well, the director and, in a ridiculously unfounded assertion having only seen one of the other films in competition, it was well deserved. The beginning (and most of the rest) of the film invites comparison with Walter Hill's 1978 film The Driver , with Gosling even resembling Ryan O'Neill at times - at the film's credit in low-key lighting and from a low angle I, just for a minute, thought it was Ryan O'Neil. Parttime stunt driver, parttime mechanic, parttime getaway driver and fulltime toothpick chewing 'brooder' Ryan Gosling plays the unnamed lead, with no past he just drifts into his closest friends life like a Sergio Leone hero, and dares to dream of a future as he becomes involved with a ...