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, […]

Dangerous Game (1993)

With Dangerous Game (1993), Abel Ferrara makes a movie about making movies, so you’re gonna get histrionic method acting shouting, people wearing sunglasses indoors smoking cigarettes like vampires, catholic themes about indulging vices and expunging guilt, and copious scenes of drinking and drug-taking while a Schoolly D track pumps away in the background. For Dangerous […]

Special Effects (1984)

What I enjoy about Larry Cohen is how he approaches things as a writer: the story’s gotta have a hook! Released in the same year as Brian De Palma’s Body Double, Cohen’s film Special Effects (1984) is a comparable twist on a Hitchcockian thriller. The hook: What if a movie director was a murderer? (A […]

Tale Of Cinema (2005)

Tale Of Cinema (2005) is the second film I’ve seen by the prolific South Korean director Hong Sang-soo and apparently this is the first one where he started using zooms? A scene will be playing out in a master shot and then the camera will zoom in, resetting the frame, almost haphazardly and amateurish, but […]

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)

In Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003), there’s an obvious contrast between the 1960s wuxia film being screened, Dragon Inn, and the dilapidated cinema where its being shown; the faded film stock of adventure and action compared to the mundane stillness of empty cinema seats and rain dripping from the ceiling. Within Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang’s slow […]