Kamikaze Hearts (1986)

One of the first scenes in Kamikaze Hearts (1986) I couldn’t get enough of. Sharon Mitchell sitting in the back of an open top convertible, driving through San Francisco, as she plays to the camera in her leather jacket and sunglasses. If you didn’t know Sharon Mitchell as an adult film star, in this moment, […]

Funny Pages (2022)

Growing up in 1980s and 1990s pop culture, one myth was the idea that if you were a geek or a nerd, or if you had niche interests about arts, movies, comic-books, that made you more special and creative than the mainstream. I can’t point to any one text, but just the idea that if […]

Let The Sunshine In (2017)

I love director Claire Denis, but I always filed Let The Sunshine In (2017) within the “I’ll get around to it” category within her filmography. I think it’s really the fault of the English title and the Hair musical associations I had in my head from it (the French title I think translates more towards […]

Hamlet (1948)

Watching Grand Theft Hamlet this year made me realise that I’d never watched an adaptation of Hamlet. Obviously being one of the big William Shakespeare plays, I know it through pop culture, the famous lines, the references and parodies (thinking of Schwarzenegger doing Hamlet in the parody dream sequence from Last Action Hero). I wanted […]

The Eternal Daughter (2022)

The Eternal Daughter (2022) is not a horror movie, but a ghost story. It’s useful to make that distinction since it’s about eeriness and suggestion, using ghosts as a way of dealing with memory, uncertainty and unresolvable emotions. Joanna Hogg (Unrelated) reunites with Tilda Swinton (after her first short film, Caprice, and The Souvenir Part […]