The Lesson

A horror film about a teacher who snaps and finally decides to teach his lesson in the only language his pupils understand. A bleeding-heart lefty’s rage fantasy, implicating the audience in their own desire to see the unpleasant main characters brought to heel. Kinda reminiscent of Funny Games, Clockwork Orange, Misery and (also by Stephen…

Miles Ahead

A musical biopic focusing on Miles Davis’s nadir, after his spoiled wean attitude has driven away everyone close to him and he has insulted, humiliated, beat and degraded his wife in every way imaginable until she leaves him to his self-indulgent shitpile of fuck-up. Ewan McGregor plays the journalist who is pulled into the swirling…

No Home Movie

Just saw No Home Movie which I loved! It a narrative-less peephole view of the director’s mother and their relationship. It radiated love. As anyone who knows me will know, despite my pretensions, I actually get bored during long shots of “nothing happening”; after thinking, “Yes, pretty”, I think about where I’m itchy, how full…

Rattle The Cage

A delightfully over-the-top Arabic crime noir/Western in which an Arabic Tom Waits is trapped in a cell when a psycho killer disguised a cop takes over the precinct. The killer cop’s manic depiction reminded me of Andrew Scott’s Moriarty in Sherlock, i.e. bonkers.

Dheepan

A movie about a refugee family-of-circumstance swapping a life of violence in Sri Lanka for a life of violence in the French slums. Despite the subject, it had a surprising amount of warmth and humour.

The Official Story

A movie about the wife of an Argentinian military man who begins to suspect that her adopted daughter was one of the generation of children stolen from dissidents. A big issue told in a tight and personal microcosm.

Labyrinth of Lies

Labyrinth of Lies, an absolutely excellent film about a turning point in German history, where the prosecution of former Auschwitz guards marked a decisive cultural change about whether Germany chose to forget the crimes of the past as simply part and parcel of the nature of war, or as an atrocity to be remembered lest…

High-Rise

High-Rise is awesome! A weird, kaleidoscopic, psychedelic, nightmarish, modern fairytale. Also, THE HIDDLESTON!  So many nude scenes, so definitely getting it on DVD for slow-mo. I have, sadly, lost this pair of leggings.