Amarcord (1973)

I really became swept up in Amarcord’s (1973) approach to depicting a place, a time, a memory. Directed by Federico Fellini, and while not strictly autobiographical, the film is based on his memories growing up, set in the village of Borgo San Giulano during the 1930s and Benito Mussolini’s Fascism. Rather than having one character […]

Defending Your Life (1991)

This might be a generalisation, but it felt like the late-1980s/early-1990s were all about high concept comedies, usually involving time travel, reincarnation, body swapping, and the afterlife. I remember the video cover for the Albert Brooks film, Defending Your Life (1991), but watching it had eluded me until the Albert Brooks collection on the Criterion […]

The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)

All I really knew about Peter Weir’s first film The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) was its memorable title and the iconic image of the VW bug covered in spikes, which was used a lot in the advertising that sold it as a genre horror film (and is even referenced in Mad Max: Fury Road). […]

Deerskin (2019)

Deerskin (2019; Le Daim) is directed by Quentin Dupieux who is also the electronic musician Mr Oizo and who has for the past decade built up a career as a filmmaker specialising in weird, offbeat fare. His first film, Rubber, which I’ve still not seen, was a meta-horror movie about a rubber tire that could […]

3 Faces (2018)

3 Faces (2018) opens with footage recorded on a smartphone of a young girl, Marziyeh (Marziyeh Rezaei), who pleads for help from an actor, Behnaz Jafari, to support her dreams of wanting to become an actor herself and studying at a conservatory, all of which is strictly denied by her village in the face of […]