‘Good Morning, Night’ is a brilliant film. I saw it over a year ago and my memory of it is too dim to base a review on, but vivid enough for the fact it’s been slept on to get to me. Perhaps it’s one of those ‘You don[…]
Fear of voice-over: what is it about documentaries and talking heads? Why do we need to see people say what they are saying. Given that most docs are edited so’s to make a coherent argument, using talking much as essay-writers use quotations fr[…]
There’s a weird gag in ‘Bridget Jones 2’: two people sitting next each other on a plane to Thailand both get out ‘The Beach’ as holiday reading. Now, the book, published in 2000, is set in about 1997, so the joke makes s[…]
Biographers of film directors tend not to follow the example of their literary cousins in that intense examination of inner life is usual eschewed in favour of discussion of the director’s work itself. This makes perfect sense inasmuch as film […]
Am I alone in finding David Starkey repellant? He’s history’s Carol Vorderman. “I’ve tried to eliminate the really crass errors but I’ve no doubt that I’ve made huge numbers of mistakes. That’s the name of th[…]
I think ‘Mean Girls’ is my favourite American film of the year, and one of my favourite ever teen movies. Like ‘Cruel Intentions’ it has an 18th century feel which I probably why I also relate it to Eric Rohmer, whose latest, […]
‘The applause of the French in Cannes for Michael Moore’s 9/11 was the sound of the cement drying over the corpse of Kerry’s chances of carrying the Midwest.’ — Counterpunch. But Counterpunch also says that the dread sce[…]
London Film Festival: the hot news is, fuck the London Film Festival. It’s a kind of test case for reception theory: I used to think, sponsors be damned, here is an opportunity to watch lots of skill films. But such is the intensity of branding[…]
A magazine editor once gave me a very severe look when I told him ‘Century of the Self’ was better than any movie in 2002. I don’t think he owned a TV. I like what I’ve seen of Adam Curtis’ newie ‘Century of PH34R&[…]
David Thomson says it might be a fault of his that he can’t find too much enthusiasm for Ken Loach, despite his obvious merits, and the same no doubt extends to the Great British public at large, or certainly to me. In a certain pessimistic per[…]