The Decline Of Western Civilization (1981)

I grew up as a Wayne’s World fan and always intended to explore the director Penelop Spheeris pre-Wayne’s World career, especially their trilogy of music documentaries under the banner title, The Decline Of Western Civilization. For the first film, The Decline Of Western Civilization (1981), Spheeris captures a time and place, the punk movement in […]

Documenteur (1981)

Documenteur (1981) was filmed by French director Agnes Varda in Los Angeles while she was separated from husband Jacques Demy and it is subtitled “An Emotion Picture”. Like some of Varda’s other work, it mixes together fiction and reality, employing a documentary approach towards constructed elements that are no doubt reflecting what she was going […]

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 […]

A Better Tomorrow (1986)

The iconic image from A Better Tomorrow (1986) is Chow Yun-Fat as the triad gangster Mark wearing dark sunglasses and lighting a cigarette with a flaming bank note, a counterfeit note incidentally. Lesser known is the sight of Yun-Fat wearing a pilly sweater with a pattern of beaded colours in a night club and still […]

Outland (1981)

Peter Hyams wanted to make a western and so he set it in space with Outland (1981). From the title credits to the interiors, the aesthetic is clearly following the path of Ridley Scott’s Alien to the point where it feels like it takes place in the same galaxy and settles into a grimy, lived-in […]