Matador (1986)

Pedro Almodovar’s film, Matador, has a provocative opening salvo, with the character of Diego Montes (Nacho Martinez) sitting alone at home, masturbating in a chair to clips of murder and death scenes from slashers and giallo thrillers (I was delighted to recognise the Jess Franco film, Bloody Moon, in the mix). Shifting from this conflation of auto-erotic […]

The Intruder (2004)

As a filmmaker, Claire Denis offers elliptical narrative experiences, introducing us to a few characters, observing their faces and their movements, and only gradually revealing the connections and histories between them. The Intruder (2004) is even more elliptical than her other films, complicating our understanding with the inclusion of dreams and recurring figures who may be more […]

Reflection In A Dead Diamond (2025)

What I appreciate about Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani (Let The Corpses Tan, The Strange Colour Of Your Body’s Tears) as filmmakers is that they are fetishists. Drawing upon memories of genre cinema – a gesture, a moment, a flourish – and not simply re-creating them, but deconstructing and exploding them. With Reflection in a […]

The Grapes Of Death (1978)

When choosing something to watch, there’s often a scene early on that clinches for me whether I’ve made the right choice or not. For The Grapes Of Death (1978), directed by French exploitation filmmaker Jean Rollin, when the protagonist Elizabeth (Marie-Georges Pascal) is running for her life through the French countryside, completely alone within the […]

Eileen (2023)

Eileen (2023) is a character study. It’s also about stretching out the tension. The question keeps occurring: where is all this going? It’s the mid-1960s, it’s wintery and grey Massachusetts. Eileen works as a secretary in a prison. She looks after an alcoholic ex-cop father. She has daydreams about sex, or about killing her father. As […]