VHS Tracking

Category: Arthouse Cinema

  • Love And Anarchy (1973)

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    I’d not heard of Love And Anarchy (1973; Film d’amore e d’anarchia, ovvero: stamattina alle 10, in via dei Fiori, nella nota casa di tolleranza..) until Lewis Rice O’Donnell talked about it. Directed by Lina Wertmüller and set during the 1930s, it’s about a fuzz-faced yokel named Tunin (Giancarlo Giannini) who travels to the city in… Read.

  • Certain Women (2016)

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    Certain Women (2016) is based on the short stories by Maile Meloy, and set and shot in Montana, small towns and wide open plains, everything overcast and grey, filmed as a space of both beauty and loneliness. Three short narratives play out – a lawyer’s (Laura Dern) interaction with a disgruntled client (Jared Harris), a… Read.

  • First Reformed (2018)

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    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… Read.

  • Performance (1970)

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    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… Read.

  • Solaris (1972)

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    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)… Read.