Occasional film writer for Sight & Sound, BFI, Dazed & Confused, Media Magazine, Leamington Underground Cinema Journal, and Second Run DVD.
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Meet Me in St. Louis 1944
First re-watch since the 35mm presentation at Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2018.
Aside from the fact that Judy Garland looks like an emaciated ghost - the only real-world slippage that indicates a backstage to Minelli's gorgeously hermetic world - this is a work of pure, joyful escapism, a movie that bundles me up and carries me away from minute one.
There is tension, of course, in the film's acknowledgement of passing time and future uncertainty. Stasis & tradition vs. progress & modernity. The…
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On Body and Soul 2017
In 2024 I'm starting a new, semi-regular feature for my blog called Certain Films, alongside the writing of a book that I've been researching over the past 3-4 months, a culmination of several interests that have guided my interest in cinema over the last half-decade. In addition to this, I want to resume the practice of simply logging and making a note on the majority of films I watch. This is the least serious, but easiest outlet for my everyday…
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Death and Transfiguration 1983
"Why did God make you?"
In the final scene, the man dies. But it's hard to know, after all these years of violence, repression and misunderstanding, if Robert Tucker was ever truly in this body at all...
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Madonna and Child 1980
A concentrated expression of the soul's desire; its shackles and its silences.
File this one alongside Brakhage's I... Dreaming and Akerman's Je, Tu, Il, Elle as the most spiritually and emotionally isolating movies of all time. I probably would have cried all the way through if I weren't also marveling at Davies' rhythmic and compositional skill, and his sensitivity toward space, time, and motion. A total masterpiece.