Top Ten Films of 2020 (Sort of…)
Previous years lists can be found here, here and here. This is a list of the ten films I enjoyed the most in 2020. Rather than being confined just to films released in 2020, instead it is a list of films that I saw for the first time in 2020, as there’s still so many […]
Review: The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)
In the 1980s, documentary film-maker Errol Morris was conducting research for a project about psychiatrist Dr. James Grigson, a man who was often called to give psychiatrist evidence in criminal trials who would almost always declare the defendant likely to re-offend, leading to him being involved in more than 100 trials that delivered a death […]
Review: Dark Water (Hideo Nakata, 2002)
In Scotland there’s a word we sometimes use to describe the wet and miserable weather we often get: dreich. I think this could be aptly used to describe Dark Water, and not in any negative way, it’s all the better for its dreich-ness. Dark Water is a Japanese horror film, a world away from the […]
Review: Three Colours Blue (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993)
In 1993, Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski released the first film in his Three Colours Trilogy, Three Colours: Blue. The trilogy means to explore the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity (liberté, égalité, fraternité), and Blue deals with the first of those three: liberty. Three Colours Blue: Synopsis It does this through the story of a […]
Review: Dogtown and Z-Boys (Stacy Peralta, 2001)
For me, Dogtown and Z-Boys mostly came off like exclusionary arseholes reminiscing about when they were part of the in-crowd. I guess it makes sense that these guys were in their hey-day before punk, and that skating seems a much more interesting sub-culture to me post-punk-boom, in the 80s and 90s. I love punk, the […]
Lesser Seen Cinemas Project #1. Scotland in Film: An Accurate Reflection?
The Imagined “Scotland” In Film In preparation for the production of the film Brigadoon (Vincente Minnelli, 1954), producer Arthur Freed was shown possible filming locations around Scotland by Forsyth Hardy, Scottish film critic and co-founder of the Edinburgh Film Festival. After taking in the scenery “Arthur Freed went back to Hollywood and declared: ‘I went […]
Review: The Vanishing (George Sluizer, 1988)
The Vanishing (George Sluizer, 1988), or Spoorloos for its original Dutch title, begins with young Dutch couple Rex (Gene Bervoets) and Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) holidaying in France. It’s clear that the relationship is not without its problems, but even so there is a great deal of affection and a deep emotional connection between the […]
Review: Our Little Sister (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2015)
After watching a family utterly destroyed by greed, pride, vanity and vengeance last night in Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985), it was something of a palate cleanser to see such an incredibly warm and affectionate portrait of a (slightly unorthodox) family tonight, in Our Little Sister. In the Japanese coastal city of Kamakura, three adult sisters […]
Review: Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
The folly of pride. The arrogance of man and his best-laid plans. The deceptive and destructive allure of power. Temptation, family, revenge, and war. Ran (Akira Kurosawa) is epic in every sense of the word. In the beauty of its colours and cinematography, in its setting, in its story, in its length, and of course, […]
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman, 2020) Review: An Expertly Crafted But Ultimately Unsatisfying Puzzle
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is like a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces all fit together just-so, everything is exquisitely crafted and layered, it all comes together. I can’t deny this. It’s a very well made film, and the acting is great. However, I just couldn’t enjoy it. It was like one of those 10,000 piece […]