Charisma (1999)

1999 is often discussed as a great year in cinema, and key to that is because it was 1999. All the celebrated and successful films of that year tend to share themes about the destruction of the old, the beginning of the new. Or are vibrating on end of the century, millennium anxieties – fear […]

The Day He Arrives (2011)

In Hong Sang-soo’s The Day He Arrives (2011), a young film director Seong-Jun (Yoo Jun-sang) walks down the street of Seoul, wearing a puffy coat and a travelling backpack, intending to stay with a friend, a film critic, Young-ho (Kim Sang-joon). The director has made four movies but is in an on-going hiatus, living further […]

Fruit Of Paradise (1970)

When it comes to the avant garde as long as it looks good, I don’t care if it’s incomprehensible. Not that I really think Czech director Věra Chytilová’s Fruit Of Paradise (1970) is incomprehensible. I have seen Chytilová’s most famous film, Daisies, twice in my life and enjoyed it. In the first ten minutes of […]

Ghostbox Cowboy (2018)

The dream for me is to read about a film on Letterbox that I’d never heard of before, and then immediately discover it’s been available to stream on Tubi this whole time. Ghostbox Cowboy (2018) is an example of that dream, which in a few reviews compared it to New Rose Hotel and Demonlover, the […]

The Creatures (1966)

I had a cursory understanding of what The Creatures (1966), written and directed by Agnes Varda, was about. The film opens with a couple – Edgar (Michel Piccoli) and Mylene (Catherine Deneuve) – driving together, Mylene warning Edgar not to drive too fast, and upon that, they inevitably crash. What I was taken aback by […]