El Planeta (2021)

A box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates in a display window. Filmed in digital black and white, a framed image that the camera lingers on and one of my favourite shots in the movie El Planeta (2021). In the Spanish town of Gijon, there are numerous shops boarded up, closed down on account of a recession. […]

First Name: Carmen (1984)

Jean-Luc Godard in the 1980s is terrain I’ve always wanted to investigate. The French auteur coming back to narrative movies after the 1970s, retaining his experimentation and politics, and constantly assessed by reference to his fertile 1960s heyday aka “the fun stuff.” First Name: Carmen (1984) was the first from this 80s period that I […]

I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians (2018)

I was a fan of Romanian director Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, and was reading recent interviews with him about his next film doing the festival rounds. This compelled me to track down some of his earlier films, and the only one available on SBS On Demand is I Do Not Care […]

Classical Period (2018)

The main reason I watched Classical Period (2018) was that its running time was 60 minutes and it was available to stream on Mubi. After watching Classical Period, I grew to appreciate it more thinking about it, particularly after reading a few interviews with the director-writer Ted Fendt, a film projectionist who self-funds his movies, […]

Don’t Let The Riverbeast Get You! (2012)

In certain circles of film fans, the movies from Motern Media have a growing, niche audience. Low budget movies produced in the New England area by Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh and their collaborators. Roxburgh usually directs, Farley stars and scores, and they co-write these opuses, mainly released through their website. Settling down to watch […]