Le Navrie Night (1979)

When it comes to art cinema, and slow cinema, I often think of an ideal viewer that must exist who is 100% alert and awake, and intellectually keyed into the symbolism and poetics that might take place. But then again, why should I judge myself against an ideal viewer that doesn’t exist? If you fall […]

The Creatures (1966)

I had a cursory understanding of what The Creatures (1966), written and directed by Agnes Varda, was about. The film opens with a couple – Edgar (Michel Piccoli) and Mylene (Catherine Deneuve) – driving together, Mylene warning Edgar not to drive too fast, and upon that, they inevitably crash. What I was taken aback by […]

Variety (1983)

A young white woman sitting in a ticket booth for a porno theatre. The key image to Variety (1983) that I had in my head before watching it. New York city in its grimy, sleazy prime. “The old New York” is an idea that has been mythologised into nostalgia, often calcified (HBO’s The Deuce, for […]

Morning Patrol (1987)

“The stupidest question anyone on Earth could ask: where the hell has everybody gone?” All the woman (Michele Valley) says she has is a coat and a knife. The world has fallen into dystopia and no-one can remember why. The countryside is littered with abandoned vehicles and detritus. Scavengers ride around in motorcycles. In the […]

First Name: Carmen (1984)

Jean-Luc Godard in the 1980s is terrain I’ve always wanted to investigate. The French auteur coming back to narrative movies after the 1970s, retaining his experimentation and politics, and constantly assessed by reference to his fertile 1960s heyday aka “the fun stuff.” First Name: Carmen (1984) was the first from this 80s period that I […]