Je Tu Il Elle (1974)

One haunting image from the film, Je Tu Il Elle (1974; I You He She), is when Julie, the young woman played by the director, Chantal Akerman, has shifted furniture out of her ground floor apartment, and has moved her bed against the wall. Sitting against an alcove in the corner of the room, near […]

Videodrome (1983)

VHS tape might be an antiquated medium but writer-director David Cronenberg’s sick idea to fuse it with flesh ensures Videodrome (1983) has a long shelf-life as a body-horror sci-fi cult classic. Even if the technology featured is dated, from VCRs to cathode tube TVs to cable satellite dishes, the cold eroticism and sick intrigue of […]

Nenette And Boni (1996)

Tactile, melancholic, sensuous, elliptical. It’s hard to describe the effect that Nenette And Boni (1996) had on me. Directed by Claire Denis, and co-written by Denis and her collaborator Jean-Pol Fargeau, the story is about a brother and sister living in Marseilles. The experience of the movie is that it gives you pieces of the […]

The Headless Woman (2008)

I always loved that in their Criterion Closet YouTube video, Lucrecia Martel selected Carnival Of Souls and said something to the effect of, that it was enough to make one film if it was as great as that. Only after I had watched Martel’s film, The Headless Woman (2008), did I see its connection to […]

After The Storm (2016)

One evening, I was looking for something soothing and gentle for a movie, and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After The Storm (2016; Umi yori mo Mada Fukaku) worked its charms on me. I’ve only seen Kore-eda’s Shoplifters and that had me bawling at the end, with its displays of human kindness and compassion in an unjust world. […]