Category: Film
My collected writing on one of my greatest passions: film. I was a film critic in my undergraduate days (trivia: that’s how I met my wife!) but I now take a more philosophical approach to thinking and writing about films I see.
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Wuthering Heights
Fennell | 2026 | USA, UK Pretty [boring]. That said, a flavour of take I continue to see about Wuthering Heights concerns the “accuracy” or “respect” of the adaptation. One formed and shared in particularly bad faith called it “anti-intellectual” and “dangerous”. Movies are movies and books are books. Even when a book is adapted […]
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Conte d’été
[A Tale of Summer]Rohmer | 1996 | France 2nd watch. 2026 begins with me continuing my quest to re-watch Rohmer’s Four Seasons cycle in line with the “real life” seasons. This might just be the walkiest and talkiest of all the walk and talk stories out there (a compliment). Dinard, St Malo, and St Lunaire […]
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Ciao Bambino (and the Roxy)
Pistone | 2025 | Italy Had myself a night at The Roxy, including a three course dinner at Coco, their restaurant (Sunday roast: lamb shoulder). A yummy time followed up by this meditative coming-of-ager playing as part of the Italian Film Festival. Plumbs a straight line to the only ending it could have, but which […]
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Wake In Fright
Kotcheff | 1971 | Australia | 35mm I’m new to the Yabba, so why not ring up my 1,600th movie with what is probably the best Australian film I’ve ever seen – and on a pristine 35mm print from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, while we’re at it. Wake In Fright had […]
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Weapons
Cregger | 2025 | USA Julia Garner now 2-for-2 since Wolf Man and we’re back! Enough here to sustain interest, but a case of there being a great movie in here somewhere that just is never really drawn out. This is likely my own fault, as I went in expecting a much different tone and […]
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Shakman | 2025 | USA Trivia Factoid: the subtitle of this film refers to the first steps on the road to forgiveness for Julia Garner (who subjected me to Wolf Man earlier this year).
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Le Rayon vert
Rohmer | 1986 | France Considered by many to be his greatest film, this was a Rohmer blind spot for me until now. Knowing people loved it, I’d saved it for “the right moment”. Ironically so, it turns out, as the central character is also waiting for something she can’t articulate or read in the […]
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Affeksjonsverdi
Trier | 2025 | Norway My most anticipated 2025 release, and it delivered. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus posits that suicide is the only true philosophical question. He ultimately rejects suicide and outlines his absurdist philosophy, using the stage actor as one of his illustrative examples of the “absurd man” [sic]. The stage […]
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À bout de souffle
Godard | 1960 | France 3rd watch; first in cinema. And what a delight to see the recent 4K remaster on the Ritz’s biggest screen in the dark of the matinee. Godard’s manner of punctuating nods to his influences with idiosyncratic formal touches is what makes him inimitable. This is my favourite of his films […]
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The Talented Mr. Ripley
Minghella | 1999 | USA I’d never seen this, and can’t stop seeing people note how good Jude Law looks here. And, agreed, but let’s not sleep on late-twenties Cate Blanchett, people. Elsewhere, there just seems to be too much story for a single movie. It’s pacey to the point of feeling like a dot […]