Film posts
I'm currently doing a film challenge:
I've posted film reviews (notes? ramblings?) on and off for years, and I discovered that writing a few paragraphs embedded the film a little more in my memory. I also love the structure of a film challenge. It gets me out of endless scrolling and helps me choose.
Previous film challenges:
October 14 2020, 08:00
Spring (2014)
If Guillermo del Toro shot a film scripted by David Cronenberg, based on a story by HP Lovecraft, then had it edited by Richard Linklater, you would get Spring. [more...]
October 13 2020, 08:00
Jacob’s Ladder (1991)
Jacob is beset by visions and fever dreams. We constantly switch between realities, from the Vietnamese jungle, to his home in New York City, and it’s bewildering, for him and us. [more...]
October 12 2020, 08:00
Noroi: The Curse (2005)
This mockumentary is made from grainy handheld video and low-resolution clips of Japanese televison shows. It revels in its fragmentary, low-fi nature. It feels cursed. [more...]
October 11 2020, 08:00
Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
Gilderoy is a fish out of water in a remote Italian sound studio. He thinks the film he's working on, The Equestrian Vortex, is about horses, but in fact is an Italian horror film about the torture of witches. [more...]
October 10 2020, 08:00
Piranha (1978)
Being nibbled to death by a swarm of piranha is a different agony, I imagine, to being bitten in half by a great white shark. It’s fun, with a surprisingly dark heart. [more...]
October 09 2020, 08:00
Fascination (1979)
Marc, a thief, steals a bag of gold from a gang, and is chased by them to a nearby chateau, where two women, Elisabeth and Eva, are waiting for the arrival of their marchioness. [more...]
October 08 2020, 08:00
Vampyres (1974)
The first of my #31DaysOfHorror choices this year that I would say is exploitation cinema, I chose Vampyres, naturally, because of the cover art. [more...]
October 07 2020, 08:00
Knife+Heart (2018)
Knife+Heart (Un couteau dans le cœur) is a modern giallo film that plays out in a gay porn production company in the summer of 1979. [more...]
October 06 2020, 08:00
Death of a Vlogger (2020)
A bang-up-to-date social media horror mockumentary. Twenty years on from Pulse, people still feel empty and disconnected, but now everyone has a webcam. Affecting, funny, and unnerving. [more...]
October 05 2020, 08:00
Pulse (2001)
The Tokyo in Pulse is empty and eerie. People are lonely and disconnected from each other. The characters are all young and, in one way or another, alone. [more...]
October 04 2020, 08:00
The Crow (1994)
Eric and his fiance Shelly are murdered by a gang of men on the night before their wedding. Eric’s soul cannot rest until he gets justice. [more...]
October 03 2020, 08:00
The Fog (1980)
The Fog is an old favourite. I watched it over and over again on VHS as a kid, recorded off the television, and it embedded Adrienne Barbeau’s radio DJ, alone in a lighthouse on the edge of town, as a lifelong crush. [more...]
October 02 2020, 08:00
Atlantics (2019)
Atlantics is art house, and it’s a romance, but it’s hardly a horror film. It is, however, fascinating. [more...]
October 01 2020, 08:00
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)
I wanted to start this year’s #31DaysOfHorror with a classic. I’m trying to watch only films I haven’t seen, and Creature From the Black Lagoon was the oldest unwatched horror film I owned. [more...]
July 12 2020, 05:28
Reality Bites
Reality Bites is still surprisingly affecting. I had low expectations. I’m not sure why. There is something about your early twenties that is particularly painful and potent. [more...]
February 03 2019, 18:12
Anomalisa (2015)
Everyone looks the same to Michael Stone. He is in Cincinnati to give a talk at a conference. He is desperate for something real in his life, an authentic person who is not like everyone else. [more...]
August 20 2018, 11:15
Point Break
It’s tricky to find films that my fifteen-year-old son will want to watch with his forty-something parents, but this seemed to sit in the sweet spot — surfing, armed robbers, a cocky young hero, skydiving, a love interest and lots of banter. [more...]
August 19 2018, 09:15
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Siblings Sally and Franklin come to a remote part of Texas to make sure their relatives remains haven’t been dug up from a local cemetery in a bizarre, gruesome local crime. But Franklin’s curiosity gets them into trouble. [more...]
August 15 2018, 19:35
Exhibition (2013)
A married couple, D and H, have created their own emotional ecosystem, balancing intimacy and distance, in a big modernist house somewhere in Central London. [more...]
March 03 2018, 21:09
High Rise
I read several Ballard books in the late nineties — my mid-twenties — starting with short stories, before being entranced by the shiny silver paperback cover of Super-Cannes. I thought I’d read High Rise, but I quickly realised on starting it that I hadn’t. [more...]
December 08 2017, 21:14
It Follows (2014)
I avoided watching It Follows because the idea was unsettling. It’s a genius concept embedded in a homage to John Carpenter and Halloween. The characters are all on the cusp of adulthood with their parents barely around... [more...]
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