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 […]

Losing Ground (1982)

When we first see philosophy professor Sara (Seret Scott), she is lecturing to a classroom behind a lectern, glasses on and hair tied into a bun, discussing Jean-Paul Satre. This opening scene of Losing Ground (1982) might indicate that this will be a heady, intellectual film, but it’s really about peeling back the layers underneath […]

Something In The Dirt (2022)

I really dug Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson’s The Endless. And while I liked Synchronic fine enough, their screen presence as actors – not just as the co-directors, writer and cinematographer of their projects – is an underrated element. Something In The Dirt (2022) was something Moorhead and Benson made during the pandemic, basically filming […]

Foxfur (2012)

Foxfur (2012) won me over by its title credit sequence using Tangerine Dream’s ‘Crystal Voice’ from the original Firestarter film soundtrack, trippy synth ambience over an image of outer space. This is the first film of cult director Damon Packard’s that I’ve now seen, and knowing that it was one hour long and available for […]

Variety (1983)

A young white woman sitting in a ticket booth for a porno theatre. The key image to Variety (1983) that I had in my head before watching it. New York city in its grimy, sleazy prime. “The old New York” is an idea that has been mythologised into nostalgia, often calcified (HBO’s The Deuce, for […]