The Kid Detective (2020)

Tone is such a tricky thing to get it right, particularly when you are juggling tones while blurring genres. The Kid Detective (2020) begins with a goofy premise – a kid detective (like Encyclopaedia Brown) who solved neighbourhood crimes, now a washed up adult still solving “cases” – and eventually becomes one of my favourite […]

Knock Off (1998)

Director Tsui Hark’s gift to cinema: a POV shot of a foot going into a shoe. A knock off shoe that we receive extreme close ups of the wear and tear suffered as Jean Claude Van Damme pulls Rob Schneider on a cart in a competitive race through the streets of Hong Kong. And this […]

Wheels On Meals (1984)

I knew SBS Cult Movies screened Wheels On Meals (1984) occasionally on a Saturday night, much as they would any Jackie Chan Hong Kong martial arts flick from the 1980s, and all I recalled was that Jackie rode around on rollerblades. Turns out that was a false memory implant and that it’s a skateboard you […]

How To Marry A Millionaire (1953)

Here’s to the first movie I watched that was new to me in 2021! A suggestion by Sally after seeing clips on a Classic Hollywood instagram account, How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) was a bright, funny romantic comedy set in New York City, one of the first movies from 20th Century Fox shot in […]

The Last Of Sheila (1973)

When Rian Johnson was doing the press rounds for Knives Out and discussing “Whodunnit” influences, one title he would offer, which I’d never even heard of before, was The Last Of Sheila (1973). It has the distinction of being written by actor Anthony Perkins and musical composer Stephen Sondheim, and apparently based on Sondheim’s love […]