• 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 that doesn’t feature Anna Karina. The vibes are immaculate.

    When I was in Paris last year, I went out of my way to find the street, Rue Campagne-Première in Montparnasse, where the final scene was filmed. Surprisingly little had changed in 64 years, in particular the door of the apartment where Patricia (Seberg) and Michel (Belmondo) are hiding before the final shootout unfolds.

    This is the only of the several film locations I visited in Paris that was formally marked as such. This sign had been erected to mark the significance of the street:

    I was particularly touched that somebody had — unofficially, I imagine — traced a chalk outline in honour of Michel/Belmondo:

    This is the first time I’d seen the movie since that visit, so it was very fun to meld those memories with a film I adore.

  • 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 point outline of the story’s most important beats.

  • Friendship

    DeYoung | 2025 | USA

    As somebody who has seen every episode of I Think You Should Leave many times over, it’s very hard for me to take Tim Robinson seriously in any other context. Fortunately, that seems to be a feature of this production rather than a bug. The attempt to balance a very dark (borderline sinister) tone with laugh-out-loud gags more or less works, and they really stick the landing. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.

  • Superman

    Gunn | 2025 | USA

    The character/concept of Superman has never really done it for me. Consequently, this imperfect but well-executed piece of cinema is about as good as I can imagine a Superman movie ever being. There is a thread of humanity here that is rendered tenderly and extratextually rather than aggressively and overtly. Maybe I can be into the new DCU.

  • La Femme de l’aviateur

    Rohmer | 1981 | France

    3rd watch.

    A movie that I adore so unreservedly that when I was in Paris last year, I went out of my way to visit Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, where the above sequence was filmed. It’s hard to show a character completely wake up to themselves in merely 106 minutes, and Rohmer waits until the last of those minutes to punctuate the journey. Perfection.

  • Raising Arizona

    Coen | 1987 | USA

    3rd watch and, somewhat miraculously, 2nd in cinema.

    On the cusp of my 41st birthday, I find myself in an ongoing period of reflection. Or perhaps I am continuing a 41-year-long period of reflection. There is no beauty in this world except the beauty one perceives. Sometimes this perception occurs within a broader context, and I’ll have more to say on that subject soon. But truly we are born with two eyes and we need do no more than look around to find beauty.

    Go forth and sin no more.

  • La Chimera

    Rohrwacher | 2024 | Italy

    Just the tonic I needed this week. Every now and again cinema just really delivers. Josh O’Connor is sublime here, as is his linen suit. Quietly and yet unrelentingly romantic, it is elliptically punctuated with oneiric imagery that foregrounds the turmoil within Arthur’s psyche. One to rewatch and reinterpret through the years.

  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

    Gilliam | 1998 | USA | 35mm

    5th or 6th watch – first time in cinema.

    One of my first cinema loves, and I fell in love anew seeing it on the big screen with an audience of God’s own prototypes – too weird to live and too rare to die. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see this film and then walk across the street to my favourite bar, which takes its name from this story: Bat Country. A flash in the pan of its ingredients, it’s another film that I can’t imagine ever not loving.

  • F1

    Kosinski | 2025 | USA | IMAX

    Tremendous cinematic fun while you’re watching (in IMAX, anyway). More enjoyable still if you don’t pause to wonder why the white guy is always teaching the black guy in these stories, or why F1’s “first female technical director” (in quotes because they say it four times) only gets over the line when that same male sprinkles his magic knowledge on her. ALL THAT ASIDE, this proves my theory that you can paint by numbers so long as you aren’t boring.

  • Bonjour Tristesse

    Chew-Bose | 2024 | Canada, Germany

    It’s well documented that “beautiful and charismatic people being beautiful and charismatic on the coast of France” is one of my favourite film genres, and this slots into that genre nicely. With a title that translates to “hello sadness” you’d be forgiven for expecting the same sadness that was relentlessly foreshadowed in the 1958 Jean Seberg adaptation, but we don’t really say hello to the sadness here so much as we recognise it as it passes by. Contextually and tonally, this is best.