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 is, perhaps, because we have arrived at a moment of all art being impermanent (despite what tech bros peddling NFTs will tell you. 35mm film, however, can be objectively and irreparably destroyed.).

Indeed, I have recently started to dabble in drawing. I have feared finalising my pencil sketches with anything as permanent as ink or marker, because one false stroke could [devastatingly] ruin ten or more hours of work.

But then I read about the trick of tracing your pencil sketches, and then perhaps tracing it again. At which point the pencil sketch is art, the tracing is art, and any number of subsequent tracings are art. What, then, is an abandoned sketch I’ve scrubbed out?

Exploring this question (while challenging you to decide if art and a psychotic break can be mutually exclusive) is what might be my favourite ending of any movie. Preceding it is a fascinating meta commentary on filmmaking as [barely-] controlled chaos, anchored by Maggie Cheung playing, well, Maggie Cheung (as a deceptively self-aware avatar of herself).

Assayas has a lot to say via these filmic manifestations of unreal realities, and it’s all packaged not unlike the nouvelle vague films that inspired it. I could probably learn something about myself if l interrogated my own propensity to emotionally connect with explorations of craft. Perhaps that is our call-to-action.

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 by adult oversight that was dispassionate at best and uncaring at worst, leaving little space in which to find myself (and probably not much to find, at that). The word “stifling” comes to mind, albeit not the brand of stifling experienced by Lucia here. The sound design is entrancing in a way that carries you away like one of her daydreams; the choral music a resplendent aural backdrop. Something very special, this one.

Hill | 2009 | USA

Umpteenth viewing, but my first in years. Criminally misunderstood and widely underseen, this is my go-to answer when people ask for a hidden gem (with the GIANT caveat that the comedy is very dark and the action shockingly violent). Done zero favours by a marketing campaign that would have you expecting a stoner comedy, this film arrived eight years after 9/11 as the GFC continued to reveal how screwed everybody was going to be. Ronnie (Seth Rogen) was unexpectedly the perfect “hero” for this moment: delusional, troubled, overconfident, solipsistic to a fault, and off his meds under his own advice.

One of the best things about this film is the economy of storytelling – there’s barely 80min of movie here, and yet we cover a full (if perverse) hero’s journey INCLUDING love interest (my forever-crush, the delightful Collette Wolfe). Ronnie remains implacable throughout – one might rush to decide he’s a delusional moron but I will always argue he’s a victim of his circumstances (which is why he felt so universal in 2009). His heart is in the right place but almost never at the right time or in the right way.

All of this builds toward a climactic moment of naked violence that is one of my favourite moments in any movie. Not because I long for violence but because the movie manages to make it feel cathartic. Though you might see it coming (and I obviously always know it is), it levels you all the same. Frankly, a perfect[ly horrific] ending.

Reichardt | 2025 | UK, USA

I remember reading an interview with one or both of the Coen brothers in the aftermath of No Country For Old Men blowing everybody’s mind back in 2007. They were asked why they chose to set the story in the 80’s and their answer was simple: to not have to worry about cell phones making the story impossible to tell.

This floated to the front of my mind even as The Mastermind unfolded: this simply wouldn’t be as compelling if cell phones existed. In short, it would be too easy to avoid basically all of the obstacles encountered. And this is perhaps why such deceptively simple stories, out of time, compel us as we start the second quarter of a century defined by the ever-advancing creep of tech into our lives and psyches.

If verisimilitude can be considered a genre unto itself, carve this film onto its Mount Rushmore alongside films like Allied (the most compelling film Robert Zemeckis has made in the last couple of decades – and still largely underseen).

Josh O’Conner is an unbelievable talent now two-thirds of the way through a loose “bad art thief” trilogy that I’d very much like to see tied off one day. Maybe I’ll tie it off myself by watching this one again straight away.

Copie conforme

Kiarostami | 2010 | France, Italy

2nd watch. I don’t have notes from my first watch and so l don’t remember if I was initially as struck by the role that literal reflections play in the story (see above for a good example). It’s all part of a delightfully playful conceit that I can see myself interpreting differently every five years or so when I dip in for a rewatch. Like any good philosophical meta commentary on art, it leverages the viewer’s solipsism (and I’ve used this phrasing quite deliberately to distance myself from the argument) to make them feel as if all art is for and about them. Which, of course, it is.

Lumet | 1975 | USA

First watch; instantly a new favourite. Rarely has a film been this sweaty. Mind-bogglingly layered, it will reward viewing after viewing. Al Pacino simply hands in another all-timer performance, no biggie. The sound design alone deserves to be unpacked via a one-off podcast.

I cannot imagine the dread in the heart of a contemporaneous audience watching this a mere three years after the Munich Massacre. I’m coming into this a cool 50 years after release and still my heart was skipping beats. Profound[ly] cinema.

[Viewed in cinema @ Ritz Randwick]