The Spirit of the Beehive (El Espíritu de la colmena, Spain, 1973)

“Now without bitterness nor contempt
now without fear of changes;
only thirst…a thirst
of a little something that kills me.
Rivers of life, where do you run?
Air! it’s air I need.
What do you see in the dark depths?
What is it that makes you tremble and fall silent?
I can’t see! I look on like
a blindman face to face with the [...]

Fallen Angels (Duo luo tian shi, Hong Kong)

This is probably my favourite Wong Kar-Wai film. I love its portrayal of urban alienation and Chris Doyle’s cinematography is sensational. WIth its companion piece, Chungking Express (Chung Hing sam lam, Hong Kong, 1994), Fallen Angels offers a vision of Hong Kong as a hyper-real landscape on the brink (of Chinese takeover). Hong Kong, as [...]

Wild Strawberries (Sweden, 1958)

This could be Bergman’s masterwork. An old miserable geezer gets a road trip down memory lane and finds how he’s wasted his life. Miserable? Not really; life affirming ‘yes’ so watch it. Some creepy dream sequences – nicely surreal. (DVD, 3)

Slow Motion (France-Switzerland, 1980)

Twenty years after Breathless this movie was heralded as Godard’s return to form. 26 years after that this still looks good but I remember been baffled and enchanted in equal measure. It’s probably me that’s changed so I don’t find this movie difficult now; still has some fabulous composition’s and its wit is mordant. If [...]

Last Year in Marienbad (France, 1961)

I remembered being mesmerised by this (25 years ago), on a 16mm print, and then not enjoying it so much on TV a few years later. With widescreen TV and DVD this film gets near enough to cinema’s visual experience to enrapture again. I also remember it being enigmatic but now it seems less [...]

That Obscure Object of Desire (France-Spain 1977)

Bunuel’s ‘last breath’ (as a film). Casting two actresses in the same role is a surrealist masterstroke (they are the obscure object of Fernando Rey’s bourgeois desire) and the ongoing terrorist attacks in the background were never more relevant. Funny and mischievous. (DVD, 2). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075824/

Three Times (Taiwan, 2005)

It’s great to see that challenging arthouse is still around (are there any British arthouse films where the pacing is slow and the narratives require committments from viewers?). This stays in the mind (maybe cos little happens events get burned into the head) and the 2nd section is particularly haunting (partly due to the fabulous [...]

The Seventh Seal (Sweden, 1957)

Ingmar Bergman seems to be out of fashion but he was pre-eminent in the establishment of arthouse cinema during the 1950s and helped loosen the shackles of Hollywood’s Production Code. My memory of this was of a portentous and gloomy and good film. Watching again I’m struck by the warmth and humour! Memory faulty or [...]