The Hired Hand (1971)

From the beautiful first five minutes of shimmering water, silhouetted figures, dissolving and overlapping images, all made poetic by Bruce Langhorne’s score, I was very into Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand (1971). Thankfully, everything after that made good on that opening’s promise. After the huge success of Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper went to make the […]

Wanda (1970)

I first found Wanda (1970) a bit difficult to get into. The opening is slow, observing workers and families in close proximity to a coal plant in rural Pennsylvania, which seems as depressing and barren as the industrial landscapes in Red Desert. Here, Wanda (Barbara Loden) wakes up on a friend’s couch and is late […]

Donkey Skin (1970)

Donkey Skin (1970; Peau d’âne) is directed by Jacques Demy and apparently was his most successful movie in France, a lavish fairytale starring Catherine Devenue. In contrast to modern fairytales that rely on CGI to create a world of fantasy, this is very old school in its approach, filmed exteriors at an actual castle and […]

The Plumber (1979)

I’ve always been curious about The Plumber (1979) ever since seeing that it was categorised as a horror movie, and that it was a lesser known work from Australian director Peter Weir. There are some more genre appropriate posters and videos covers out there that make it look like a menacing slasher, and the opening […]

Killer Of Sheep (1977)

Thanks to Revelation Film Festival’s online version of their annual film festival, Couched, which ran this year in July, they included a Black Lives Matter section that included two films by Black American filmmaker Charles Burnett. Killer Of Sheep (1977), Burnett’s thesis film at UCLA, was something I’d long wanted to see due to its […]