Shock Corridor

I was going to write a blog post about Spike Jonze's new film 'her' and I had tonnes of clever stuff lined up about relationships, and the future, and technology, and about being a human being, and...y'know, life. Then I remembered, he'd already done it himself in January in the old Sight and Sound : 'I was thinking about how I interact with technology every day, how much everybody I know does, and what that means.... There is a distancing to relationships today, and it's obviously a big part of the movie, but it's not necessarily just technology, it's also the tempo at which we live our lives, and the amount of information and communication that come at us and that we're expected to react to. It's easy to say technology connects us and it's easy to say that it doesn't. There's no black and white, the conversation is more complicated, and it's in those grey areas that it's interesting and real. I tried to make a mo...

Howdy, in case the poster isn't clear enough, I saw  Only Lovers Left Alive  (Jim Jarmusch, 2013) recently and being who I am, I now feel oddly compelled to talk at you about it.  I'll shout **SPOILERS**  at this point but I'm going to have to add that if anything spoils this film for you then we probably wouldn't get on very well if we were to meet at say a fashion show, harvest festival or even in a pub. The film was directed by Jim Jarmusch. Jim Jarmusch is a dude. He is effortlessly cool and so are his films: Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (1999), The Limits of Control (2009), and the rest drip and ooze cool, although cool generally isn't the best way to describe things that drip or ooze. That said, it would be a mistake to think that his films are superficial. They can meander, they can be sharp, they can digress, they can be powerful and they can be flippant; they are like th...

Howdy. Offt! March is looking like a very strong month of films at the cinema and I'll tell you what, I'm going to try and see them, and then write about them and then…ehh…maybe watch a bit o' telly or something. What is catching my eye in particular is: Nymphomaniac (parts I and II) (Lars von Trier, 2013);  Her   (Spike Jonze, 2013);  Only Lovers Left Alive   (Jim Jarmusch, 2013), The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014) and  Under the Skin  (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) Let's kick this of with Nymphomaniac  (Lars von Trier, 2013). In typical style there was a buzz around - no! A furore - No! A brouhaha (doesn't fit as well as furore but I like the sound of it) around the film.  The controversy, or expectation, or umbrage, or what ever swell of feeling, is often stimulated in no small part by von Trier himself (see the publicity shot) . This time Lars von Trier has remained muted about the film in a self...

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...

Howdy. I went on a holiday. I went camping. I went camping round some of Scotland to places where films were filmed, or places that reminded me of certain films (just put that in there before it becomes obvious). The plan was to do a blog post for each day but that was when I thought I was just going to look at a disparate collection of films in different locations around the country. That changed. So what the hell was I thinking!? I don't know really, I did it because I love film and almost five years ago to the day I spent 10 days in Nairn watching films, and that was one of the greatest experiences of my life, so I think I thought I'd try and emulate that in some way. It was never going to be the same as the last time because that was in once place, with hundreds of others and there were beanbags lying about and readily available scones, but the idea was there to just enjoy films in a different way. That's where the first night came from and the choice of  The ...

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 ...

Last weekend I watched films…I’ll give you a couple of minutes to compose yourself. Ok? Ok. I did this at – well I did it at home as usual but I also toddled along with the lovely Hannah to the rather fine GFT . It was here that I was treated to a brace of non-fiction cinematic offerings: a preview of Project NIM , the new film from James Marsh ( Man on Wire (2008) and Wisconsin Death Trip (1999)) and Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog (a chap I personally admire) in 3D because you just need all the D’s you can get. In short, this was thoroughly pleasant way to spend a Sunday and if you'll allow me to indulge myself I'll let you into why I think...y'know...why. In Project NIM James Marsh has sewn together newly shot interviews with stock footage from the 1970s and created a piece of film that is thoughtful, funny and highly emotional – it is impossible not to love the star, he’s like people! They call him Nim Chimpsky! And this is perhaps (part of)...

        From the minute Gort, a ten-foot tall robot, walked down the runway from his spaceship, I was mesmerised. When you are six staying up late is exciting enough, but when you’re six - staying up late - waiting for your dad to come home - during a ferocious thunderstorm, you really have to keep an emergency set of clean underwear beside you. But this is exactly what I found myself doing. Sitting in the dark, which was only interrupted by the crackling coal fire, the flickering black and white portable TV and the occasional flash of lightning, I flicked through all 3 available channels and found an old movie called The Day The Earth Stood Still . For those that don’t know, the film’s plot revolves around the reasonable enough premise that an alien comes to earth, sent by a federation of planets, in an attempt to convince mankind that they are making a huge mistake by testing nuclear weapons. The spaceship lands in Washington D.C., fair enough...