Please Baby Please (2022)

Director-writer Amanda Kramer’s Please Baby Please (2022) reminded me of discovering Johnny Suede on SBS when I was young. The discovery of an arthouse American indie cinema morphing together the past and the present, a receptacle for a filmmaker’s fetishes. Empty alleys or street facades. Apartment interiors on a studio set. Creating a whole situation to let make-up, hair, […]

Sparrow (2008)

Movies in love with the movies. Hong Kong director Johnnie To began making Sparrow (2008) over three years in between other projects, most of them crime movies about cops and/or gangsters like Election and Exiled. There’s an element where it feels like Sparrow was another lane to escape to, and even though it is still […]

Matt And Mara (2024)

Mumblecore gets a bad rap. I assume it’s the name, which most of the filmmakers lumped into that sub-genre didn’t care for. And don’t get me wrong, some of those movies are annoying and bad. Friends and I who got into those films were mainly responding to Andrew Bujalski’s first two films. Cassavetes was an […]

Boiling Point (1990)

Takeshi Kitano treats violence with the same structural impact as building a gag in comedy. Boiling Point (1990) veers between violence as a joke – a call back, or a punchline, like when a young kid refuses a helmet on his first motorcycle, and then cut to him sitting stunned with a bloody face – […]

High Heels (1991)

High Heels (1991) is like Pedro Almodóvar inviting the audience to a boutique shop to peruse and sample. Melodrama is the purpose for being there, but the pleasure lies in admiring and marvelling at all the wares: the wigs, the hairstyles, the dresses, the shoes, the gloves, the earrings. High Heels has a striking colour […]