Year: 1943 Director: Maya Deren

If there’s a prize for least-seen film on the Sight and Sound 2022 poll then number 14 I am sure would be in with a shout. Meshes of the Afternoon is a 14-minute black and white silent film from 1943, made by avant-garde US/Ukrainian film-maker Maya Deren. Deren plays the protagonist, a young woman who returns home and sees a mysterious hooded figure. She falls asleep in a chair and in a series of dream-like replays of her return home a number of actions are repeated: she sees a mysterious hooded figure with a mirrored face. She opens the door with a key, and later on the key reappears from her mouth. She goes up a flight of stairs and lifts the needle from a record playing on a portable phonograph. There are telephones around the house off the hook and bread and a knife. Later on a doppelganger of her appears, and a man who she attempts to injure. In the final scenes she appears again in the chair now dead. If David Lynch had never made films perhaps this film would not have the current prominence it has, though clearly a film that » Continue Reading.

Year: 1962 Director: Agnes Varda

Cleo from 5 to 7 is number 14 on the 2022 Sight and Sound Poll, another big climber from 207 in 2012. Another female directed film, after Jeanne Dielman at 1 and Beau Travail at 7. It’s (almost) a real-time film, following French pop singer Cleo around Paris from 5pm to 6:30pm as she awaits the results of a medical test.

And what a breeze this film is. Florence, Cleo is her stage name, is first seen at a tarot reading, where the predicted results of her test are not seen by the cards as good. She meets her maid (a fabulous channeling of Lynn from Alan Partridge energy) in a cafe and goes hat shopping. This first third is fabulous flaneuring – streets, cafes, taxi rides, shops, pavements all crammed full of interest. Director Varda was a cinematographer and each shot is immaculately framed, despite a loose and dynamic feel to the camework.

The energy drops in a long scene at her bijou flat – who wouldn’t want a swing and a coterie of kittens in their living room? – as firstly her older lover and then her Rogers and Hammerstein drop by » Continue Reading.

Year: 1984 Director: Jonathon Demme

I’ve had a quite a history with Stop Making Sense (SMS). Way back in December 1983 I was visiting by brother in San Francisco and we saw the show at the San Francisco Auditorium. Standing up the front we watched the whole thing unfold as they wheeled out the staging and as additional performers came on stage. It was a cracker of a show.

The album came out they day I was to fly back, so I landed in Australia with probably the first copy on the continent. I think it the following day that I was back on air with my African and roots radio show. I figured that from Fear of Music on the Heads were close enough to African to warrant inclusion. So, I played it. The whole lot, both sides, stopping only to flip the disc. For the only time in my 8 years on air the switchboard was flooded. At least it proved to me that some was actually listening.

Come January 1984 Talking Heads are coming out to Oz for a festival and did a show in Melbourne. So off I go again. Much less of the » Continue Reading.

Year: 1929 Director: Dziga Vertov

Numbers one to eight on the Sight and Sound 2022 poll are – diverse in time, language and theme – broadly feature films. Scripts, actors, costumes and sets telling a story. Number nine is a different beast altogether – a hour-long documentary film chronicling urban life in twenties Soviet Union – AKA The Man With a Movie Camera, directed by Dziga Vertov in 1929. Arising out of techniques developed in his earlier ‘kino-pravda’ newsreels in the twenties, Vertov’s hour-long silent film sought to create a completely new film language without any reference to other art-forms like literature, theatre or painting.

The structure of MWAMC is fairly straightforward: there’s a very ‘meta’ opening in which we the audience in the cinema see the audience assemble in the cinema, the band tune up, the projectionist fire up the projector and so on. Sadly no DVD version in which we assemble on the sofa, Pringles and beer to hand, while someone feeds the disc in and tries to sync up the sound bar.

Then the film itself follows the rhythm of a day in the life of a Soviet city – compiled from shots in Mosow, Kiev » Continue Reading.

Year: 2001 Director: David Lynch

There’s been a slight hiatus in assembling the watching party, but last night we sat down to enjoy the eighth best film ever made – which according to the Sight and Sound 2022 poll is Mulholland Drive (or Dr). It’s place as the apex of the Lynch canon appears now unquestioned, above Blue Velvet and er Dune. All the more mysterious that this was his last film that in any way could be called a mainstream feature film. Inland Empire, his next, was shot on digital film and independently distributed.

The basic structure of Mulholland Dr. is straightforward: after a car crash a nameless young woman wanders through LA in shock, eventually ending up at new-actress-in-town Betty’s flat. Staring at a poster the amnesiac calls herself Rita and the two women investigate the circumstances behind her crash. In a parallel plot, maverick film director Adam is trying to prevent a mysterious gang taking control of his current movie, including insisting that an unknown actress called Camilla Rhodes play the lead.

As ‘Rita’ and Betty follow the trail, there are a host of familiar Lynch tropes, including the small man who spoke backwards in Twin Peaks » Continue Reading.

Year: 2023 Director: Christopher Nolan

Unless I’ve missed it, I don’t think anyone has attempted a review of this so far, so I thought I’d start the ball rolling. I don’t have a massive amount to say about the film, but I’ll give you a brief run through of my thoughts.

The basic background to this is that it’s a biopic of J Robert Oppenheimer, the slightly eccentric individual who was in charge of the Manhattan Project. He had a bit of a moral crisis after his work led to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (although I understand in real life his change or heart was maybe a bit more complex and ambiguous than is portrayed here), and then in the 50s he was blacklisted and victimised under the McCarthy communist witch-hunt stuff.

In the hands of a traditional, safe director it might have made a dull but worthy straightforward story. In the hands of Christopher Nolan, as expected, you get something a bit different. Opinions will vary (and it certainly seems to have gathered a few fans and ecstatic critics) but personally I didn’t think it quite worked.

At the heart of it, the reason is simple and easily » Continue Reading.

Year: 1953 Director: Yasujiro Ozu

After Citizen Kane and Vertigo Tokyo Story is the fourth greatest film of all time, according to the 2022 Sight and Sound poll. It was third in 2012, and fifth in 2002. The plot is simplicity itself: an aged mother and father (68 is seen as a venerable age) from western Japan visit their grown up children in Tokyo for the first time. Neighbourhood doctor Koichi and beauty salon owner Shigi both regard the parents visit as an interruption to their busy lives with their own children and jobs. Noriko, the widowed wife of another son posted missing in WW2, is far more selfless with time and trouble. An effort to pack the parents off to a seaside resort in the guise of treating them is a complete failure, and the parents are practically hurried out the door back home.

The first half of the film sets out an entry point as a generational comedy, but the story pivots on two parallel scenes resulting from the parents return from the resort. The father hooks up with some former colleagues, and they get steaming drunk in a geisha bar, proclaiming their disappointment with their offspring. Their » Continue Reading.

Year: 1915 Director: Claire Denis

Beau Travail is like Jeane Dielemann another recent film to leap up the Sight and Sound survey. In 2012 it was a lowly 79. In 2022 it’s number seven and second in my odyssey through the 2022 poll. I did say I was not watching these strictly in order, next up will be In the Mood for Love (no 5). Nobody surely needs another review of Vertigo (2) Citizen Kane (3) or Space Odyssey (7). It’s a tight 90 minutes and doesn’t waste a second.

The story is loosely derived from Melville’s Billy Budd (as the Britten Opera, which appears in the soundtrack, is too). In place of the ship our closed institution is the barracks of an elite French troop of foreign legion troops based in Djibouti. The time of the film is not specified, but as Djibouti became independent from France in 1977 I am guessing sometime in the early seventies.

Sargeant Galoup has decades of exemplary military service, and rules his troop like the perennial drill sergeant figure by being the most masculine, hardest, fittest man amongst them. His bond to the captain is challenged by the arrival of new recruit Sentain » Continue Reading.

Year: 1975 Director: Chantel Akerman

If only there was a musical equivalent to the Sight and Sound once in a decade poll of the world’s greatest films. Imagine 1,639 music critics, academics, curators and archivists from across the world submitting a top-ten poll. If nothing else it creates a list against which all others can be measured. No chance.Sigh.

So, anyway onto the Sight and Sound greatest films of all time list. The 2022 list delivered a thunderbolt by proclaiming Chantel Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman 23, Rue Du Commerce, Bruxelles number one. Vertigo, the top one last time, falls to two and Citizen Kane is at three. Surely no-one needs a write-up of either of these but Jeanne Dielman I hear you say. What on earth is that. Take this as the start of an impromptu series working its down the films on the list newer to me, and probably to you too. So no 2001 (no 6) or The Godfather (12) but absolutely yes to Beau Travail (no 7). Can’t promise they will all be in strictly rank order as some are as short as 14 mins, others weigh in at over three hours.

We have a brand new » Continue Reading.

Year: 1972 Director: Danish Television

An annual screening of a Dead concert had a hiatus for 2 years due to COVID but was back this year featuring their concert at theTivoli in Copenhagen during their famous Europe 1972 tour. Pretty tight and in tune, one drummer and Jerry not a junkie this was pretty much peak period Dead. though OOAA.This was the tour with all the clown masks bought before the tour at a novelty shop. These days they looked a bit creepy with all the horror /serial killers shows with clown masks. Fun fact the roadie kept the masks for years but he kept them in a box that was exposed to sunlight so they have all melted.

The concert was filmed for a TV broadcast – the sound was excellent , the video looked a bit like a VHS tape transfer so, given this is touted as a fully restored high definition version, the previous extant copies must have been a bit rough.

An audience of less than 20 at our showing and just one “chick” dead dancing in the aisle.I expected more people but there were there other showings.

A gaunt Pigpen opened the show with It » Continue Reading.

Year: 2021 Director: Eskil Vogt

Like everyone normal, I have a mentally curated list of ‘outstanding performances by unknown kids in foreign language films’. Au Revoir Les Enfants, My Life As A Dog, Pelle The Conqueror, Cinema Paradiso, etc. I’d have to add The Innocents to that list. Especially one Alva Brynsmo Ramstad as a profoundly autistic girl and Rakel Lenora Fløttum as her sister. Utterly convincing and captivating performances from both of them. I came across the film because it was placed number one in Rotten Tomatoes list of “best horror films of 2022”. I’m not sure I’d consider it a horror film. It has none of the genre’s cliches; no jump scares or blood and gore or poorly lit scenes (it’s mostly set outside in the comfortingly bright daylight). What it does have is a great build-up of tension. In Kevin Maher’s review in The Times he wrote: “Finally, a film for grown-up audiences who are sick of watching superhero movies and feel that cinema has been ruined by superhero movies but, all the same, quite fancy watching one last superhero movie as long as it’s a superhero movie for grown-ups.” Calling it “a superhero movie” is way » Continue Reading.

Year: 1991 Director: Oliver Stone

This isn’t so much a review of the film itself, but more just that I want to scribble down a few thoughts after watching this for the first time since I saw it 30 years ago in the cinema.

I’m interested in what people think of the film, and of The Doors themselves, and whether Oliver Stone does them justice here.

It’s pretty derided, isn’t it, this movie? The very model of how to make an overblown, ridiculous rock biopic, and taking itself far too seriously. And yet… It must have done something right because when I saw this as a teenager it absolutely blew me away and (along with Pink Floyd’s The Wall) solidified in my head the archetype of the alpha male rock star: that ‘elegantly wasted’ thing, an old head on young handsome shoulders (with leather trousers and a six pack) going on a voyage of self discovery and excess, too cool for the square that is trying to box them in. Is there any one among you who also saw this as a teenager and is going to deny the big effect it had on them?

As we get older, of » Continue Reading.

Year: 2021 Director: Pablo Larraín

What I was expecting:

1.) A solid biopic with a decent-enough performance from the Pope of Mope, Kristen Stewart — basically a big-screen version of The Crown.

What I got:

1.) An intense, claustrophobic, hallucinatory psychodrama, more Mulholland Drive than The Crown.

2.) A prowling camera that turns Sandringham into The Overlook Hotel and the Royal family into the sinister, watchful islanders from The Wicker Man.

3.) A performance from Kristen Stewart that is definitely excellent and intuitively leans into the unexpected weirdness of the whole thing, but still didn’t impress me quite as much as Emma Corrin in The Crown.

4.) A film that often gets in its own way, conveniently forgetting Diana’s own aristocratic roots in its rush to emphasise her outlier credentials, overlooking the fact that she spends almost no time – over Christmas! – with the two boys to whom she is supposedly devoted, and inadvertently inviting you to share the Royal family’s frustration at her frankly flaky behaviour.

5.) A sublimely skronky score from Jonny Greenwood.

6.) Beautiful, understated supporting turns from Sally Hawkins, Sean Harris And Timothy Spall.

7.) A film that, impressive though it often is and » Continue Reading.

Year: 2021 Director: Dennis Villeneuve

I am surprised that no-one has yet reviewed Dune, so here we go. We saw it at the IMAX in Birmingham and would certainly recommend that you see it on the biggest screen possible. It’s an utterly immersive visual and sound experience. It will be no surprise, and has been much noted, that Villeneuve can craft a visual world like no-one else currently in film. Whatever you thought of the plot of Bladerunner 2049, it looked amazing from start to finish, as did Arrival in turn before it. There’s very little actual outer space , and the visuals of the movies are dominated by the vast open sand and rock scapes of Arrakis, appearing even dryer by contrast with the lush Northern European grasslands of the Atriedes homeworld, and the murky storm and rain of the Harkonnens. Moving through these three worlds are armies, medieval in feel, transported by enormous spaceships whose weight is so oppressive they appear to be sculpted from stone rather than metal. By contrast the ornithopthers hop, buzz and flit around the world.

In terms of plot Dune is so well known that there’s perhaps not much to add here. I » Continue Reading.

Year: 2021 Director: Thomas Vinterberg

This is a mighty, marvellous film starring the mighty, marvellous Mads Mikkelsen. I was going off movies a bit recently, with no real motivation to get back to the cinema, so I’m glad I made an exception for this.

Mr Mikkelsen stars as one of a group of four middle aged pals, all school teachers in Denmark, who decide (in the throes of a shared midlife crisis they only seem to be dimly aware of) to try out an experiment. The human man, the theory goes, has evolved with 0.05% too little alcohol in his bloodstream. So what would happen if you decided to constantly drink, just enough that you make up that 0.05% level, in your daily life?

The film then follows the ups and downs of this experiment as they start carrying around vodka to swig from in secret, and as the events play out it is as comical as it is touching.

It’s actually impressive just as much for what it avoids as what it includes. For a very bloke-y film, it’s admirably free of any real bawdiness (it’s a 12A) or leeriness. You can imagine that in a UK or » Continue Reading.

Year: 2021 Director: Garret Price

I knew prior to this documentary that Woodstock 99 was a bit of a shitfest, but I had no idea just how big a shitfest it was. To paraphrase Marilyn Manson (who amazingly was not on the bill) I wasn’t born with enough capital letters to emphasise just how much of a SHITFEST Woodstock 99 turned out to be. We’ll go easy on the details, because much of the pleasure of the film lies in staring at your TV open-mouthed with incredulity for an hour and 50 mins. Let’s just say that in terms of WTF moments it really is the gift that keeps on giving. Think the Fyre documentary turned up to 11. Think Lord of the Flies with boobs and backwards baseball caps. Apocalypse Now where Willard is dispatched to kill Colonel Fred Durst.

But there’s a Hepworthian ‘here’s the thing’ here, because this is a festival that from your place on the sofa looks like an actual vision of hell on earth. Women are being mauled. People are dropping like flies. The place is clearly a cesspit, literally and metaphorically. And yet where is all the footage of traumatised and shell-shocked festival-goers? » Continue Reading.

Year: 2021 Director: Mick Fleetwood

Like live shows add an extra dynamic, so too does seeing a movie of a concert in a cinema rather than at home on the box. Alas for most of you streaming or the soon to be released DVd are the only option. But for us ”down here” it had a very short run at the cinemas. So twenty or so of us sat in a cinema on a glorious Melbourne afternoon to watch this guitar heavy tribute to the music of Peter Green, the guitar hero and driving force behind Fleetwood Mac Mark 1. His legend heightened by his dramatic fall, head blown by acid, eventually returning to the stage a pale shadow of his former self.

The concert before a smallish audience took place in early 2020. Fleetwood assembled an interesting line up. The core band was Mick on drums plus Zac Starkey – not sure he needed him but it certainly biggened the sound. Dave Bronze on bass, Ricky Peterson on keys and musical director and a strong line up of guitar /vocals – Rick Vito, Jonny Lang and Andy Fairweather-Low. They played plenty of songs as a unit and with varous » Continue Reading.

Year: 2020 Director: Rob Reed and Paul Harris

Definitely not for everyone, this. But thought it was worth flagging here for people who are interested.

Basically, it’s a four hour (!) documentary about the making of Tubular Bells and the establishment of Virgin Records and their Manor Studio. You’ll know instantly if that’s something that appeals to you or not.

There was an excellent BBC documentary about six or seven years ago which told the story of the album very nicely. But it was only about fifty minutes long, and left the more rabid fans (like me) desperate for more detail and context. This new documentary, from de facto unofficial Mike Oldfield curators Rob Reed and Paul Harris, fills that gap very nicely.

There is nothing groundbreaking about the documentary style itself. It’s a perfectly efficient talking heads style piece, with just about every main character in the story giving lengthy and revealing interviews. The two most missed contributors are obviously Mike Oldfield and Richard Branson themselves, which is a shame, but would be too much to expect from an unofficial documentary like this.

But to be honest there is very little to distinguish this from a big budget BBC » Continue Reading.

Year: 1951 Director: Elia Kazan

Damn. My NY resolution is to consume more of the classics in one form or another, and the project began strongly with films of A Man For All Seasons (1966), The Crucible (1996), Cleopatra (1963), The Scarlet Letter (1995) and Far From the Madding Crowd (2015), all of which I’ve got a kick out of for one reason or another.

Things came to a screeching halt with Streetcar. I always thought I liked Tennessee Williams and remember enjoying the play at Leicester Haymarket in the early 1990s, but this? Non merci. Could I really dig the Demi Moore box-office poison of The Scarlet Letter more than a movie commonly considered to be one of the greatest ever made, a film Woody Allen calls ‘total artistic perfection’?

Yes. Perhaps it coming so soon after the latest lockdown announcement was to blame, but two hours of Vivien Leigh’s nails-down-a-blackboard screeching and Marlon Brando breaking things proved a stressful and exhausting experience, offering no insight into the human condition other than ‘these people really need to calm down’. Having recognised a chunk of sampled dialogue, I paused the film in order to locate and play the » Continue Reading.

Year: 2020 Director: Spike Lee

Stop Making Sense directed by Jonathon Demme is on many people’s list of best music concert films. Mine too. This is different to SMS but it is still rather excellent. It was filmed during a season at the Hudson theatre in New York which ran after their world tour. So the whole band is as tight as a fish’s arsehole, as we say down here. Back to the concert. I reviewed it for the blog so you can track it down if you want. I was mightily impressed by the staging, the lack of amps, leads and all the other usual stage paraphernalia. A bare stage with long, I thought ropes, but after seeing the film they are revealed to be chains. Long chains, heaps of them and highly effective as a backdrop, for use with lights and with their movement.The photo I have posted here from the Melbourne show is a good example. So I was expecting the usual front of house view of the stage all perfectly recorded. But no -this was filmed from on stage , up, down, around and behind. So up close that I started taking a ,possibly unhealthy, interest » Continue Reading.

Year: 2020 Director: Emer Reynolds

I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a film about Phil Lynott made before now. There are a fair few documentaries on Thin Lizzy but there was certainly room for the story to be told. In ‘Songs For While I’m Away’ we hear of the struggles of growing up in Dublin after Phillip is brought to live with his grandparents by his mother who has had to make the awful decision to leave her son and return to England to work. Phillip does indeed learn to look after himself from an early age. He turns to music and soon meets Brian Downey(Thin Lizzy drummer). Eric Bell(guitarist) introduces himself to the pair and Thin Lizzy(version one) is on the road.

The film mixes the words and music of Phillip with interviews that include one of his ex-girlfriends, his ex-wife, and his daughters all of whom have remained away from the spotlight in the years since Phillip died. There are also interviews with Brush Shiels/Brian Downey/Scot Gorham/Adam Clayton/James Hetfield/Suzi Quatro/Midge Ure and others. The film paints a portrait of Phillip the poet, boyfriend, husband, father. The Phil Lynott that’s not always portrayed or remembered when we think » Continue Reading.

Year: 2020 Director: Mike Figgis

Is there a more cheery, affable figure in the world of rock than Ronnie Wood? This film would certainly suggest not, lauded by friends, family and fellow musicians alike, no one has a bad word to say about him. The film dips in and out of his life, covering family, music, painting, and of course drink and drugs. Along the way we hear from some of the key artists he’s worked with over the years – Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart and various Stones among others. Oddly, there’s just the one clip of him performing with the Stones, although it’s apparent from comments by Keith Richards and Charlie Watts just how functional as an alcoholic and an addict Wood still was. Even Jagger concedes the band became much more ‘good-timey’ after his arrival in their ranks in the mid seventies. His personal life also gets its fair share of screen time, including his well documented run in with cancer, although his previous wives and their children don’t merit so much as a mention. A shortish film that’s interesting to watch once, but that you’re unlikely to return to too often. The DVD is rounded out with » Continue Reading.