“Without a story structure to guide us, we become the accomplices of the director – his passengers. We go where he goes. Ophuls asks the same questions again and again, until we grow as angry as he does by the evasions of the answers. When he grows sarcastic (ridiculing one man who will not talk…

“Some get high on airplane glue… detergents… fancy gimmicks. My satori is this: Zen in the art of buttering bread!” ‘Diva’, directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix in 1981, is a French thriller and an early entry to the ‘cinéma du look’ movement. Jules, a postman played by Frédéric Andréi, is obsessed by the American opera singer…

“Goodbye, children. I’ll see you soon.” ‘Au revoir les enfants’, directed by Louis Malle in 1987, is a French drama set during the Nazi occupation. Julien, played by Gaspard Manesse, is a pupil at a Carmelite boarding school who puts on a front of being tough but throughout the film seems vulnerable, perplexed by the…

“What about things that I did for you that no money can buy, no money can buy? What about the time I gave you my spot! You came over there, I gave you my spot! You stood there and I let you get right next to Jerry. I waited for 8 hours for him and…

“Literature and History always meet.” ‘The Official Story’, directed by Luis Puenzo in 1985, is an Argentine domestic drama set during the country’s last military dictatorship. Norma Aleandro plays Alicia, a teacher and the wife of a government agent Roberto, played by Héctor Alterio. They live in a upper middle class bubble, insulated from the…

There is an debate that divides historical movies into two camps. The first attempts to depict history without mediation, in essence films that try to access a past before cinema began to shape it  through genre. The second embraces this mediation by presenting the past as a series of genre tropes and iconography, the past…

“My daughter was bursting with pride. But I thought that her admiration wasn’t worth anything unless I could prove myself absolutely incapable of doing anything evil. And as black cannot exist without white, I logically conceived the most horrible deed that I could envision right at that moment. But I want you to know, for me killing is not the worst thing”

This review of ‘The Almodóvar Collection’ DVD boxset first appeared on We Are Cult on the 21st of September 2016 The critical success of ‘Julieta’, released this summer, makes this boxset of newly restored versions of Pedro Almodóvar’s early movies all the more timely. The collection, available on DVD and Blu-Ray from StudioCanal, includes six…

“In a way I did kill him, but the truth is, I didn’t. The result was the same: the man died, and I was sent here. All right, let’s go, then. I am 37 now and eight years more makes me about 43. Then I won’t last three hours outside without killing somebody.” ‘Ariel’, directed…

My experience of the films of Akira Kurosawa before I started this journey through international cinema was limited. I’d seen ‘Rashomon’, bits of ‘Seven Samurai’ and, because of the film’s connection with ‘Star Wars’, the beginning of ‘The Hidden Fortress’. As with Andrei Tarkovsy, it took a few films to adjust my expectations to what…

“You must have patience, even while people die. Only thus can the whole evil be destroyed. You must let it grow.” I’m a happy member of the ‘Folk Horror Revival’ Facebook group. I bought the ‘Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies’ book and I’ve contributed a poem to the up-coming ‘Corpse Roads’ anthology, but I have…

I’d watched very few Czechoslovakian movies before I started on this, frankly ill-advised, journey in January. I’d seen the American films of Miloš Forman, including the great ‘Amadeus‘ and disturbed myself silly with Jan Švankmajer’s short animations, hunted down his adaptation of ‘Faust’ on VHS, and watched his 2000 fantasy ‘Little Otik’ at the cinema….

“You know, when I’m away from you, I think of you as a monster or a woman possessed, and then I see you again and all this disappears.” ‘Possession’, directed by Andrzej Żuławski in 1981, is a psychological horror movie set in Berlin.  Mark, played by Sam Neill, is a spy whose marriage, and mind,…

“We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions. Moral choices. Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices are on lesser points. But! We define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does…

“Champagne on the road’s better.” ‘Vagabond’, directed by Agnès Varda in 1985, is a French drama following the final days of Mona, a homeless woman played by Sandrine Bonnaire. The film opens with the discovery of Mona’s body in a ditch next to a vineyard, and in flashbacks it then charts her encounters with a…

“Together, we can turn this fucking world to rust!” ‘Tetsuo: The Iron Man’, directed by Shinya Tsukamoto in 1989, is a low budget Japanese horror movie. The film is sparing with dialogue and exposition and the characters don’t have names. The main character, a metal fetishist with a penchant for inserting steel rods into his…

“Anger unvented becomes pain unspoken becomes rage released becomes violence.” ‘Tongues Untied’, is a documentary directed by Marlon Riggs in 1989. It explores the world of gay, African Americans and the struggles they face both from homophobic and racist abuse, but also from their own communities. Riggs uses a mixture of poetry, performed interviews, and…

“Bonjour” ‘Le Dernier Combat’, directed by Luc Besson in 1983, is a French post-apocalyptic action movie set in a world in which everyone is mute. The main character, played by Pierre Jolivet and described in the cast list as ‘The Man’, travels through a blasted wasteland. He encounters a group of scavengers and steals a…

“A minute ago she wanted to go home but since you ignored her, she got depressed and had some gazpacho.” ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’, directed by Pedro Almodóvar in 1988, is a Spanish black comedy. Pepa, played by Carmen Maura has been dumped by Ivan, but unknown to him she is…

“But last night I saw a bright light cross the sky and stop before me. It said, “Djigui, the threat hovering over the Bambaras will strike the country, but spare your family.” That restored my hope. In the same dream, I was also told this: “Your descendants will undergo a great change. They’ll be slaves,…

“‘A house without a woman’, they say in my parts, ‘is like the Sea without a Siren’. Don’t you agree with me?” ‘City of Women’, directed by Federico Fellini in 1980, is a satirical comedy and a grand, lavish fantasy that features the ongoing adventures of Marcello Mastroianni in the colourful world of the director…

“Well, ghosts are a lot harder to see. But when you suddenly move from a lighted room to a dark one, you can’t see for a second, and that’s when the dust bunnies come out.” ‘My Neighbor Totoro’, directed by Hayao Miyazaki in 1988, is a Studio Ghibli animated childrens film. It tells the story…

Seita: Can you give her medicine or a shot? Please, doctor, help her. Doctor: Give her medicine? All this child needs is some food. ‘Grave of the Fireflies’, written and directed by Isao Takahata in 1988, is an animated historical drama produced by Studio Ghibli. It tells the story of a teenage boy and his…

“Kieślowski’s deceptively simple film (with unfussy cinematography by Witold Adamek and a straightforward yet stirring piano-dominated score by Zbigniew Preisner) might have been inspired by the most straightjacket-like of God’s interactions with humankind, but it speaks with the tranquility of a parable.” ‘A Short Film About Love’, directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski in 1988, is an…

It is now five months since I finished watching Mark Cousins’ ‘Story of Film’ and decided to increase my knowledge of and exposure to more interesting movies (I’m aware all this makes it sound like a prison sentence). I’ve watched, thought about and written about 133 movies watched which means around 30,000 words or a…

“You must also know that I shall be with you every day that is granted to me from now on. Every evening I shall sit down to dine with you. Not with my body, which is of no importance, but with my soul. Because this evening I have learned, my dear, that in this beautiful…

“Alice thought to herself: Now you will see a film made for children, perhaps. But, I nearly forgot, you must close your eyes, otherwise you won’t see anything.” ‘Alice’, directed by Jan Švankmajer in 1988, is a Czech adaptation of Lewis Carrol’s novel. It loosely takes scenes from the book and uses Švankmajer’s characteristic stop-frame…

“You spilled an ocean of blood. You showed no mercy, no pity. We too are children of this age… weaned on strife and chaos. We are your sons, yet you count on our fidelity. In my eyes, that makes you a fool. A senile old fool!” ‘Ran’, directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1985, is an…

“Wait. Everyone will be happy soon. I won’t wait around for that. Believe me, it will bore us stupid. I want happiness now, on my terms.” ‘L’Argent’, the last film directed by Robert Bresson in 1983, is as elegant and deceptively simple as his 1960s movies. Thematically its closest relation is ‘Pickpocket’: in ‘L’Argent’ we…

“Astounding! It was actually… it was beyond belief. But they showed no corrections of any kind. Not one. He had simply written down music already finished in his head! Page after page of it as if he were just taking dictation. And music, finished as no music is ever finished. Displace one note and there…