Born In Flames (1983)

File this under “Why didn’t I watch this earlier?” and “This is as great as they say…” Maybe I thought that a film about activism would be a bit like homework. Directed by Lizzie Borden, Born In Flames (1983) captures a moment of time – 1980s New York, in the No Wave era – but […]

Kids Return (1996)

Kids Return (1996) is a title I remember because it would always be programmed on SBS. I was aware of Takeshi Kitano as a teenager, mainly when Fireworks was released and received praise from critics like Margaret and David on The Movie Show. There’s a power and beauty to Fireworks with the subplot of the […]

Mike’s Murder (1984)

We don’t see the murder. Director and writer James Bridges apparently filmed one, and it was part of the negative test screenings that forced him to re-edit and structurally rearrange Mike’s Murder (1984) before its release. The original intention with Mike’s Murder was a film that was subjective with dream sequences and flashbacks; what was […]

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 […]

Benediction (2021)

Benediction (2021) was British director Terence Davies’ final film before he died in 2023. Experiencing it after recently seeing his first film, Distant Voices, Still Lives, was very interesting with their intersections. Distant Voices, Still Lives is an autobiography by Davies of his family growing up in working class Liverpool. In contrast, Benediction is a […]