Every Little Thing I Adore About 'The Innocents'...

This post was inspired by (and warmly stolen from) Alex Withrow at the wonderful ‘And So It Begins’. Check out his takes here.

As we’re about to see- from the moment I hit play on The Innocents I knew it would creep up into my heart. Truthfully I’ve failed to really hunt down director Jack Clayton’s other work which is criminal considering this is the finest directed ghost story ever told- and I’d put that above ‘The Shining’ too.

There’s a subtle psyology that elevates Clayton’s tale beyond so many other similar films- but it’s his daring, innovative and fiendishly intoxicating creative risks that take it from top-tier spook to one of the finest films in what might be the cinema’s greatest decade so far.

Every Little Thing I Adore About 'High & Low'...

This post was inspired by (and warmly stolen from) Alex Withrow at the wonderful ‘And So It Begins’. Check out his takes here.

When I first saw it, High & Low is one of the few films in my life that has genuinely knocked the life out of me. Back at the tail-end of High School I’d done some work experience at the BFI Southbank and, in all honesty, used and abused their staff discounts to pick up as many must-sees as possible.

In spite of my blossoming love for Kurosawa at the time, High & Low must have sat on my shelf unopened for almost two years before it finally clicked one hazy afternoon. Back then nobody I knew had seen it and the director’s fans oft dismissed it in favour of his more famous works. As of today, I think this sleeping giant is his masterpiece...

Every Little Thing I Adore About 'Pale Flower'...

This post was inspired by (and warmly stolen from) Alex Withrow at the wonderful ‘And So It Begins’. Check out his takes here.

I first saw Masahiro Shinoda’s ‘Pale Flower’ while I was writing for a website called The Cinemaholic, after I’d finally been given carte-blanche to choose whatever topic I wanted and boldly (and incredibly foolishly) decided to tackle the ‘100 Greatest Japanese Films of All Time’.

There’s not a country on this planet as richly blessed in the cinematic arts as Japan. Not even France, or America. In the ashes of the Second World War a nation rocked to the core (perhaps by its own actions as much as anyone else’s) spiralled into a cinematic renaissance that is, frankly, still yet to cease.

And from the murky depths of early 60s malaise, entrenched in the blossoming wonder of their own New Wave Movement, a genre picture maker named Masahiro Shinoda with more of an eye than most and more to him that anyone’s ever properly given credit for pre-dated the American crime film explosion of the 1970s in one film alone. If they only knew.

Every Little Thing I Adore About 'Woman in the Dunes'...

This post was inspired by (and warmly stolen from) Alex Withrow at the wonderful ‘And So It Begins’. Check out his takes here.

I first saw Hiroshi Teshigahara’s ‘Woman in the Dunes’ early into my first year of college, buried somewhere amidst the treasure trove of world cinema classics YouTube were (knowingly or not) hawking at that time. It immediately struck me as something special but similar to Harakiri I actually found finishing the picture a real challenge. It’s a Gordian knot of Sisyphean black magic I found exhausting on the first few attempts.

Flash forward to now and there’s sometimes a saying between artists, painfully amateur or immortally profound, that they wish they’d made someone else’s work. ‘Woman in the Dunes’ is my movie.

 

Every Little Thing I Adore About 'Letter Never Sent'...

This post was inspired by (and warmly stolen from) Alex Withrow at the wonderful ‘And So It Begins’. Check out his takes here.

I first saw Letter Never Sent as I’m sure many people have: As the afterthought sandwiched between director Mikhail Kalatozov’s infinitely more lauded ‘The Cranes are Flying’ and ‘I Am Cuba’.

The former is the only Soviet film to have ever won the Palme d’Or- and one of mother Russia’s most cherished pieces of cinema. The latter is loved the world over for its revelatory camerawork and incensed celebration (and criticism) of life in the buzzing heart of the New World. Then there’s Letter Never Sent, a comparably miniscule tale of four researchers sent out into the Siberian tundra to hunt for diamond deposits. And frankly: Films this fucking good sometimes they feel like they were custom-built to be forgotten…

Every Little Thing I Adore About 'La Jetée'...

This post was inspired by (and warmly stolen from) Alex Withrow at the wonderful ‘And So It Begins’. Check out his takes here.

Seeing La Jetée for the first time is one of a select few film-watching experiences I’ll never forget. I blind bought a DVD knowing the plot, the photomontage schtick- young and green enough to let my expectations drive (and usually ruin) a lot of movies.

Frankly I was a hell of a lot more excited to flick over to the other side of the DVD- which had Marker’s sublime ‘Sans Soleil’ just waiting to go- so I did what I never do and emerged from the inky recesses of a teenage room that seriously needed airing to watch it out in the open on the family TV. And for almost thirty minutes it felt like I’d left my fucking body.

There are no words for how much this film ever so quietly means to me, as you’ll see below, but I promise to try…

Every Little Thing I Adore About 'Yellow Sky'...

This post was inspired by (and warmly stolen from) Alex Withrow at the wonderful ‘And So It Begins’. Check out his takes here.

Yellow Sky is a film I discovered, fell in love with, and was then quickly heartbroken by when I found out how few had also experienced its black-hearted treasures.

Director William A Wellman has slipped into the sand of time, with only the C-list ‘Classic’ status of his magnum opus, ‘The Ox-Bow Incident’, curling a finger from the dark- and anyone familiar with the bitterly iconoclastic gems lurking in the bleak corners of his oeuvre knows that simply will not do…