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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Nouvelle Vague
Linklater | 2025 | France & USA Pour moi, this was a romp. I have some awareness that if you don’t have a preexisting relationship with À bout de souffle, this would be hard to get excited about. But as somebody who went out of his way in Paris to walk the street where Godard […]
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L’Inconnu de la Grande Arche
[The Great Arch]Demoustier | 2025 | France Something about doing a PhD focused on design thinking has turned me into a soft touch for all matters of design (which permeate all of life – la vie – of course). Stories about ‘visionary’ designers have a tendency of either obfuscating the relationship between a design and […]
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Pink Floyd: The Wall
Parker | 1982 | UK 2nd viewing; 1st in cinema. And it’s been at least 20 years since that first watch, because apparently now I’m old enough to talk about time in decades instead of years. Over those two decades, the importance of this album has only grown in my mind – it is well […]
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Conte d’hiver
[A Tale of Winter]Rohmer | 1991 | France 3rd watch; 2nd in cinema. A slight disruption to my year of watching Rohmer’s four seasons cycle as each season starts – I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to show this to The Girl on the big screen. And it will be no big ask to watch […]
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Man on the Run
Neville | 2025 | USA, UK There is an essential tension (if not absurdity) about Paul McCartney, and this doco comes pretty close to meaningful insight in exploring that tension. Here we have a guy – and I do mean “a guy” rather literally – who wants to be the only thing he can never […]
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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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Irma Vep
Assayas | 1996 | France Second watch; first in cinema. I am always going on about the concentric circles of art and memory, and you can stop reading here if you’d like an apology for this. Generally underexplored is the possibility of creating art by mutilating art and, by extension, the moment it captured. This […]
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Little Trouble Girls
Kaj ti je deklica Djukić | 2025 | Slovenia Films such as this have a funny way of making me question how many genuine emotions I’ve felt in my life. Far from depressing, it’s rather life affirming to view a coming-of-age tale with the benefit of a little life experience. My own adolescence was characterised […]