“The ultimate cocaine movie.” – Nicolas Winding Refn Season of the witch A nightmare fairytale fantasia from start to finish, the spine-chilling 1977 masterpiece from Italian auteur Dario Argento, Suspiria remains an unassailable experience in sensory cinema. With its crazily choreographed camera movements, striking operatic visuals and knowing nods to Hollywood classics, Suspiria is […]
Pulling Focus
Pulling Focus: Double Indemnity (1944) & Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
“Since Double Indemnity, the two most important words in motion pictures are ‘Billy’ and ‘Wilder.’” – Alfred Hitchcock Double, double, toil, and trouble Depending on who you ask, Double Indemnity –– one of the earliest A-budget studio noirs –– and the hard-boiled desperate dame and greedy man at its black and broken center, may […]
Pulling Focus: Blue Ruin (2013)
Tangled up in blue The terra incognita ferociousness on shrewd display in Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin is a revelation. This small-scale genre picture, partially funded via Kickstarter, is a bloodstained revenge runs awry report, and it adds further evidence that American indie cinema is alive and well, even if the same cannot be said for […]
Pulling Focus: Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) & Trouble Every Day (2001)
Spooky action at a distance “Well, that certainly was visual,” deadpans an ashen yet elegant Eve after watching an amiable confrere disintegrate in a cistern of acid. Eve, a vampire, played by the exquisite Tilda Swinton, is one half of an immortal dyad, whose husband, Adam, is portrayed by an incurably cool Tom Hiddleston in […]
Pulling Focus: Zelig (1983)
“Those who dismiss Woody Allen as a neurotic narcissist out of touch with reality need to confront 1983’s Zelig. Perhaps the most complex, unusual film in an already diverse CV, it remains his most culturally and politically aware work, its relevance increasing with each passing year.” – Tom Huddleston, Time Out I’m sitting on […]
Pulling Focus: Body Double (1984)
“Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.” – Pauline Kael I like to watch Tout de suite from its opening shot of a pea-soupy cemetery at sunset, a deliberately clichéd title font gauchely and accurately suggests we’re in […]