I recently watched Mike Leigh’s 1971 film Bleak Moments – his directorial debut. And while watching it, I again felt something about Leigh’s characters (or at least some of them), which I’ve felt watching some of his other films: they have a caricature-esque level of eccentricity. Others have drawn attention to this too, such as…
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Since I started using Letterboxd (four years ago), an unconscious tendency I developed when watching films is that, throughout the film, I’ll think about what Letterboxd rating I’m going to give it. If the start of the film starts really well and feels unique and perfectly attuned to my sensibilities, then I might think, This…
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Aniara (2018) is a Swedish sci-fi film written and directed by Hugo Lilja and Pella Kågerman. It is an adaptation of the 1956 Swedish epic poem of the same name by Harry Martinson. It depicts a dystopian, distant future in which extreme climate change, war, famine, disease, social collapse, pollution, and lawlessness force humans to…
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Peter Tscherkassky is an Austrian avante-garde filmmaker. He’s one of the few filmmakers who, through his experimental techniques, can create truly mind-altering cinema. There are certainly many films I’d describe as psychedelic – in terms of depicting trips or because of their cinematography and themes – but Tscherkassky’s experimental short films are different to films…
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This is a guest post by Inger Cini. The philosophers Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek have provided contrasting perspectives on cinema. In this essay, I would like to comment on the similarities and differences in their thought under three main headings: how to read cinema, ideology in cinema, and the truth in cinema. Whilst Žižek…
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