Please Baby Please (2022)

Director-writer Amanda Kramer’s Please Baby Please (2022) reminded me of discovering Johnny Suede on SBS when I was young. The discovery of an arthouse American indie cinema morphing together the past and the present, a receptacle for a filmmaker’s fetishes. Empty alleys or street facades. Apartment interiors on a studio set. Creating a whole situation to let make-up, hair, […]

The Wild Pear Tree (2018)

Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan uses the three-hour running time of The Wild Pear Tree (2018) to give considerable scope to individual encounters. Sinan (Dogu Demirkol) spends a lot of the movie walking, often wandering around deep in thought, and a recurring pattern within the narrative is Sinan bumping into someone, and beginning to chat with […]

Trouble Every Day (2001)

When it comes to Claire Denis, the word I think of is “elliptical.” The opening of Trouble Every Day (2001) begins with a couple kissing in a car at night, a couple who are not even characters in the film. We also see the Seine river at night, the water lapping under street light. A […]

Simone Barbes Or Virtue (1980)

I love movies set over one night. What wonders and surprises does the night hold? Or chaos and calamity? Then again, maybe a night is just like any other. Loneliness as the sun comes up. Within that uneventful time, there’s still lots to observe. Fleeting moments. Simone Barbes Or Virtue (1980) is a French arthouse […]

Vengeance Is Mine (1984)

Typing Vengeance Is Mine as a movie title produces a few results including the Shōhei Imamura movie from 1979 and a direct to video Steven Seagal action flick from 2010. For Michael Roemer’s film, Vengeance Is Mine (1984), which he wrote and directed, the title might give the wrong impression. It is not a revenge […]