Yourself And Yours (2016)

This has happened before with a previous Hong Sang-soo movie where I just took the events at face value, and only later browsing other people’s reviews saw the different ways they were reading into it. Because what the film, Yourself And Yours (2016), covers is often so ordinary and everyday – people meeting at bars, […]

Venus In Furs (1969)

The meeting point between exploitation demands and arthouse pretensions is ideal cinematic terrain to my mind. Base pleasures that Venus In Furs (1969) – directed by Jess Franco – offers is nudity and sex (well, what accounts for it late 1960s international cinema) with Maria Rohm nude in a fur coat with stockings and a […]

Let The Sunshine In (2017)

I love director Claire Denis, but I always filed Let The Sunshine In (2017) within the “I’ll get around to it” category within her filmography. I think it’s really the fault of the English title and the Hair musical associations I had in my head from it (the French title I think translates more towards […]

The Eternal Daughter (2022)

The Eternal Daughter (2022) is not a horror movie, but a ghost story. It’s useful to make that distinction since it’s about eeriness and suggestion, using ghosts as a way of dealing with memory, uncertainty and unresolvable emotions. Joanna Hogg (Unrelated) reunites with Tilda Swinton (after her first short film, Caprice, and The Souvenir Part […]

License To Live (1998)

There’s a shot in License To Live (1998), directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, where the main character’s father sits in a chair at the foot of his bed. Cast in shadows, the father is telling his son that he’s leaving after their brief reunion, and he resembles a ghost drained of colour. Kurosawa is best known […]