Absolutely one of my favourite films. The high point of the Herzog/Kinski dream team if you ask me. Which you didn't but I still believe it anyway. Incredible descent in to madness. Cast of hundreds. Almost documentary-like in parts... but just absolutely compelling, the contagious passion of a driven man.
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Anyone Can Play Guitar 2009
Anyone can Play Guitar is simply one of the most touching music docs - or maybe any doc - I've seen. The history and intricacies of the Oxford music scene, from the last days of punk right up until now are detailed emotionally and honestly by those who tried and failed, those who made it, and everyone in between.
Having helped with some of the typography in this film, I've been lucky enough to see it a few times now…
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Caché 2005
Deeply unsettling psychological 'thriller' - although low on actual thrills, high on Hitchcockian suspense.
A family receives mysterious videotapes of hours of footage of the front of their home. Whilst trying to discover where they are coming from, the fabric of their family life (past and present) begins to unravel. Unsettling and chilling but in ways that you can't quite put your finger on. The intrusion that the tapes have on their lives matches the feeling you have by intruding on them as a viewer - a theme that runs through most of the various bits of story, too.
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Quatermass and the Pit 1967
I saw this brilliantly 60s flick in the damp dark vault under Waterloo station - the former site of the morgue used by the London necropolis railway - no better setting, really.
So many brilliant ingredients for cheesy 60s 'horror' as well as historic London bits. Disused spooky tube station - check; Creepy guy with beard - check; Aliens, unexplained behaviour, A Woman - check, check and check.
Like a strange combination of Dr Who, 2001 and Hitchcock's London-centric Frenzy. Brilliantly weird and captivatingly dated.
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Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life 2010
Joann Sfar did an amazing job of bringing his massively long graphic novel to big-screen life. You feel like you're sneaking around next to Serge as a child, as a young crooner, as a sleazy revolting brilliant old dog, like you're sat next to him, like his ugly cabbage-headed alter-ego which haunts his reflections and moments of insecurity.
I was lucky enough to go to a preview screening of this with a Q&A with Sfar. He's not a director. He…
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The Darjeeling Limited 2007
Classic typical Wes Anderson. All the ingredients you need are there. Colours. People with no real job. Vintage/timeless outfits. Bill Murray. People trying to 'find themselves'. And most importantly, Jason Schwartzman. Oh, Jason. Ahem. Anyway. Yes. You've probably seen this so I shan't bang on about the sublime directing, or the crafty set production techniques that went in to setting most of the film on a train. This film takes me to India. It puts me on the train with…
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A Film Unfinished 2010
Just the most striking images of the Warsaw ghetto or from anything relating to Poland in WW2, really. Nicely constructed documentary, mixing durvivor stories & interviews with footage from a long-lost reel of 'making of' outtakes from Nazi propaganda film 'Das Ghetto'. Hard going as the footage is so compelling & full of hundreds of things going on, it becomes distracting to keep reading the subtitles.