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...

Howdy.  Martin Scorsese is a guy that makes films and - get this - apparently doesn't hold all the answers to all the big existential questions that have plagued man since they evolved from walking on their haunches and rubbing shit in their hair...well, not every day at least. For some that seems to be a problem, but not me. The Wolf of Wall Street  (2013) is Scorsese's latest, riffing technically from other works by the director, most notably Goodfellas (1990), and seeing Leonardo DiCaprio, in my humble but foul mouthed opinion, on a career fuckin' high with an exuberant performance that I found rather astonishing; he's in almost every frame of film and I wanted to see him more. In a wee bit I'll talk about the end of the film, so if you're one of those that can't get any enjoyment from a film unless everything is a complete surprise then jog on before I tell you about Bambi's mum, who Keyser Söze is and what  the shitting tits is in the box . ...

I just seen a film at the pictures, well a wee while ago there, and I rarely write about new stuff here because...because...well I'm too...y'know...too *Ahem* lazy, but I think I might have loved this film and I think I might have loved how it used technology and so that's maybe an important thing for me to think about. That said there is absolutely no need for me to subject you to those thoughts, but that has never stopped me before. Ohh and there might be * spoilers* but I don't think so, I've seen it though so I'm probably not the best judge. Anyway the film was  Gravity ( Alfonso Cuarón, 2013 ). Starring Sandra Bullock as Ryan Stone, and George Clooney in a supporting role as Matt Kowalski. The film is the first one where I can remember people actually pushing you to see it in 3D, not only people but film critics too (if you can stomach it you can watch Mark Kermode make a typically self-indulgent mess of telling us that it is good here ) a...

Tom Cruise. The End. Not really, but…yes. For what it's worth my opinion of the man is that he's hugely overrated and annoying. Totally undeserving of his cinematic stature - yes that was a height joke, cheap and cruel but I'm sure he'll get over it (once you start with them it is really difficult to stop). Anyhee, the main reason I hate - and I do mean hate - Top Gun  (Tony Scott, 1986) is that it encapsulates everything wrong with the 80s and human nature. A mishmash of GO ME! hair gel, Reaganomics/Thatcherism and narcissism. It oozes the specific level of bile inducing self confidence required to wear day-glo spandex and leg warmers. A celebration of egotism, greed, self promotion, and aggressive career climbing - step on/use anyone. "Too aggressive. Yeah, I guess when I see something I go right after it." Maverick says that in an attempt to woo a lady … yeah, I'm not even going near the potentially problematic juxtaposition of aggression and se...

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...