August 03 2025, 16:44
Le Samouraï
Hitman Jef Costello takes a contract to kill a nightclub owner, but he is seen leaving the premises by several employees. Despite having a watertight alibi, the police superintendent doesn’t believe Costello and puts him under surveillance. Meanwhile, Costello’s employer is unhappy with the police involvement and the hitman has to find a way to get both parties off his back. [more...]
August 02 2025, 16:03
PlayTime
Monsieur Hulot arrives in the centre of Paris to meet a man about some business, but his attempts to connect are thwarted by the distractions and mechanisms of a modern city. Other people come and go—tourists, businesspeople, tradesmen—culminating in a chaotic dinner at a the opening night of a new restaurant. [more...]
August 01 2025, 19:21
Morvern Callar
On Christmas Eve in a Scottish port town, Morvern Callar finds her boyfriend dead on the floor of their flat. In a suicide note, he asks her to send out his unpublished novel to a list of agents. Morvern is trapped in a supermarket job and has no family, so she convinces herself he means for her to post the novel under her own name. [more...]
July 30 2025, 20:08
Picnic at Hanging Rock
On an outing from their boarding school in the Australian outback, four girls wander around the base of Hanging Rock and are tempted to climb higher. The rocks seem to have ghostly powers and the girls fall asleep in a stone circle near the top. Three of them walk through a gap and disappear. [more...]
July 27 2025, 21:35
Run Lola Run
I saw this in the cinema when it came out and I remember being blown away by the mixture of pulsing techno, Franka Potente running through the streets of Berlin, and the looping narrative. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. [more...]
July 16 2025, 18:56
Splashing in the shallows
A month ago, I said I was going to try new things, and that’s what I’ve done. I started swimming lessons. I had a guitar lesson (with another tomorrow). I redesigned this website and built it under a new domain name. I read a non-fiction book about the death of neoliberalism. [more...]
June 15 2025, 13:34
Soft machine
I’m thinking about digital gardens and my creative mechanisms. Making anything involves ideas, craft and tools. My current mechanism feels like a meat grinder. I’ve managed to make “creative writing” into something brutal and excruciating. Time to dismantle the machine. [more...]
June 01 2025, 14:32
Reconfiguration
I’m switching the domain name of this website to michaelwalters.uk over the coming months. I bought it on a whim, but I knew something was brewing, and I was right. [more...]
April 30 2025, 14:59
Did not finish
Instead of posting negative reviews on books I don’t like, I’ve decided to take a few notes about what didn’t work for me, put the book down and move on to the next one. [more...]
April 06 2025, 14:13
Holding
I’m going through an uncomfortable phase. My creative projects feel stale. It’s an effort not to check the news. My YouTube algorithm has been infected with news influencers. The people I follow on Bluesky are understandably incensed by what’s happening in the world, so the news cycle plays out there too. I need to take some time away from being online. [more...]
March 17 2025, 20:51
Afire
Writer Leon travels with his friend Felix to a remote house to finish his book. Felix’s cousin, Nadja, unexpectedly joins them, as well as local lifeguard Devid, and Leon’s obsession with his work over all else becomes a source of humour and friction. When Leon’s publisher arrives, forest fires are threatening the house, and Leon has to face reality. [more...]
March 16 2025, 11:25
Super-Cannes
Written by J.G. Ballard, first published in 2000, it’s a book I’ve told myself I love for years, but I couldn’t say why, and I remember it was also frustrating, and again, I couldn’t say why. I thought I'd read it afresh and work it out once and for all. [more...]
March 13 2025, 19:46
Black Bag
George works for a British intelligence agency in London and is tipped off someone in the service is trying to sell a deadly secret. Known for his tenacity, he quickly assembles a list of suspects and begins to unpick their various motivations, but his wife, Kathryn, is also on the list. [more...]
March 09 2025, 09:51
Mickey 17
Mickey Barnes owes money to sadistic loan shark Darius Blank. To avoid a tortuous death, Micky enrols on a colonising mission to a new planet as an ‘expendable’, a person digitally copied so they can be endlessly recreated after kamikaze scientific tasks. But Mickey 17 doesn’t die before Mickey 18 is created, which makes them both question everything. [more...]
March 07 2025, 17:09
Art funnel
I have a pitch to myself. I want to get better at speaking in public. I also want to be more actively engaged in the research I’m doing for my next book. I love doing #31DaysofHorror, but the pace is not sustainable. Instead, I could drop the goal aspect, add books to the mix, and at the end of the month post a short video about them for Patreon. [more...]
March 05 2025, 19:56
What’s good to share?
I posted a short story to Patreon this week. That’s real content. I’ve been ambivalent about doing that for years, but fuck it, I’m ready to start experimenting with new approaches. I want to create good work and lots more of it. Getting it into the world is energising. [more...]
February 21 2025, 16:14
Glass full
Life feels tough this month. There’s a lot going on at work, I’m doing physio rehab, there are tradesmen in the house making a mess, the world seems to be in an awful place and getting worse, and I’m too tired in the evenings to read or write. I am grateful for all I have, but my body and brain is at full capacity. [more...]
January 30 2025, 19:02
Glutes 2
Last August I posted about my gluteal tendinopathy. I remember writing it in a penthouse flat overlooking St Ives, an amazing spot, where I was stuck for the day because I’d messed my tendons up on the hills and flights of stairs. I was miserable. Five months on, I thought I’d give an update. [more...]
January 11 2025, 10:28
Switching
I’ve always switched between interests. When I beat myself up over it, it never ends well. Different parts of my life need attention at different times—when I neglect one, it invariably comes up as a desire in some shape or form sooner or later, and ignoring that intuitive reminder is when the trouble starts. [more...]
December 31 2024, 21:54
Black Christmas
In the days before the Christmas break, a killer breaks into a sorority house and begins to pick off the girls one by one. The girls are also being plagued by obscene phone calls from someone who calls himself Billy. It’s a richly layered film with plenty of political meat on its bones for what could have been a cheap thriller for teens. [more...]
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