Mirror (1975)

Ten minutes into Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975; Zerkalo or The Mirror), there’s a scene where a doctor (Anatoly Solonitsyn from Stalker) walks away from a conversation with a woman, Maria (Margarita Terekhova) he has met travelling through the countryside. As we see the back of him in the middle distance of a field, a wind […]

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969)

Dance marathons were competitions held in the depression-era America for couples to potentially win big money if they went the distance and remained on their feet for days and days and days. With some competitions going beyond 1,000 hours with minimal breaks for food and sleep, this utter exhaustion was spectacle for the watching crowds, […]

The Irishman (2019)

The first time I watched I Heard You Paint Houses aka The Irishman (2019) was in a cinema thanks to The Backlot. When it ended, I felt like I had lived a lifetime and my head was heavy like a brick. Second viewing was weeks later on Netflix and it’s a long epic that carries […]

Zama (2017)

Set in the late 18th century, Zama (2017) is about Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a magistrate working in a colonial outpost near the Paraguay River. The opening image sees him in a classic pose of authority, tricorne on his head, sword in his holster, gazing out at the water. The next two […]

Heaven’s Gate (1980)

I don’t have access to digital TV at home, so it was a delight to be in a hotel room in Wollongong, turn on the TV to SBS World Movies and see that Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) was coming up shortly, which I’d always been meaning to see. I remember reading MAD magazines from […]