First Reformed (2018)

Paul Schrader has been in the direct-to-video weeds for a few movies with mixed results (I disliked The Canyons but quite enjoyed the gonzo-noir of Dog Eat Dog). Even though critics praised First Reformed (2018) as a return to form, there was no cinema release for West Australian audiences – Schrader was still direct-to-digital; it’s […]

Performance (1970)

Continuing to backtrack through the work of director Nicolas Roeg, and I didn’t realise he co-directed Performance (1970) with its writer Donald Cammell. First, I was surprised to see the typically urbane and upper crust James Fox convincingly play a cockney gangster, a real sadistic rotter who gets into a bit of sticky bother with […]

Solaris (1972)

Some nights in movie-watching, I strive for a double feature or heck, even a triple feature. Other nights, you’ve gotta give that entire evening to a three hour epic arthouse classic and so it was that I finally sat down with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972). I liked the Soderbergh version (love the Cliff Martinez soundtrack) […]

One Sings, The Other Doesn’t (1977)

When Agnès Varda passed away, shamefully I’d not seen any of her films. Seeking to correct such an oversight, I sought out One Sings, The Other Doesn’t (1977; L’une chante, l’autre pas), a narrative that follows the friendship between two women, which comes to symbolise feminist movements of the 60s and 70s. As teenagers, Pauline […]

Persona (1966)

It’s always a revelation when you finally see an art-house classic and understand all the references and influences that have flowed on ever since. So it was with finally watching Persona (1966), part of my catching up on the filmography of director Ingmar Bergman. My initial understanding was that the film was about two women […]