Week In, Week Out
Weekly collections of five mini-reviews capturing a wide range of films—old and new, obscure and iconic. A personal film journal in snapshots, offering quick, insightful takes on whatever’s been on the screen lately.
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Movies of the Week #7 (2023)
L’inferno (1911): I’m noticing a pattern – when I do watch a movie made a hundred years ago or more, it’s the technical ambitions that impress me the most. Dante’s Inferno feels like cinema, it’s daring, effects heavy and visually imposing. I’ve never read the Divine Comedy, but following Virgil and Dante into the depths… Read more
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Movies of the Week #6 (2023)
Kurz und Schmerzlos (1998): Fatih Akin’s feature debut is the kind of friendship/mafia movie that felt thematically relevant in the 90s and 00s. Three criminally inclined pals of differing origins in multi-culti Hamburg struggle to find a meaningful way through life, living on the edge of wrongdoing and love (how does that joke go, a… Read more
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Movies of the Week #5 (2023)
Unrelated (2007): While still pussyfooting about The Souvenir: Part II, I dug deep and found myself watching Joanna Hogg’s debut feature film. As an added bonus, this also happens to be the non-TV debut of Tom Hiddleston. The movie tells of forty-something Anna (Kathryn Worth), who is struggling with mid-life things while on holiday in… Read more
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Movies of the Week #4 (2023)
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021): Hamaguchi directed two big Japanese movies released 2021, this and the Oscar winner for best international picture, Drive My Car. For whatever reason, WoFaF came up first on my watchlist and so I indulged myself with the three kinda-romantic shorts about, as the trailer puts it, coincidence and imagination.… Read more
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Movies of the Week #3 (2023)
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920): One of my goals this year is to fill some of my big cinematic knowledge gaps, starting with bona fide classics, particularly from the first half of last the 1900s. Robert Wiene’s Caligari, even seen outside context, immediately feels like a clever movie, whose plot might be familiar to… Read more
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Movies of the Week #2 (2023)
Capra cu trei iezi (2022): This has to be the first Romanian (folk) horror movie I’ve ever seen and I’m glad to say that it stands as an equal to modern horror movies all around. Victor Canache has taken Ion Creangă’s fable and turned it into a haunting tale of family, solitude and pure evil.… Read more
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Movies of the Week #1 (2023)
Western (2017): You just know that when the Germans come into town, you need to lock up your horses. Just kidding, of course, they’ll get to them any way. Western is, as the title implies, a bit of a (modern) genre piece, as a bunch of German construction workers head into the “wild East” i.e.… Read more
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Movies of the Week #51-52 (2022):
Carol (2015): Sometimes you leave a movie for “a later time” in the hope that it will live up to its promise and just find…the right moment. It seems like that’s been the case with Carol, a brooding love story that transcends labels and provides a masterclass on defining mood and emotion through film and… Read more
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Movies of the Week #50 (2022)
Plus que jamais (2022): If you’re up for heartbreak, then why not watch this beautiful and crushing tale of love and tragedy? Emily Atef might be showing European restraint, but adding the real life death of co-lead Gaspard Ulliel in a skiing accident at the beginning of this year really gives it an extra layer… Read more
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Movies of the Week #47-49 (2022)
The Menu (2022): Well, I guess could call The Menu something like The Triangle of Food, given that it shares its overarching theme with Sadness. Thankfully, it keeps itself in check more and finds a better balance, making for a more entertaining serving. It’s surprising to see that this is Mark Mylod’s first strong directorial… Read more
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Movies of the Week #45-46 (2022)
Take Out (2004): One of Sean Baker’s early works (co-created with Shih-Ching Tsou), Take Out has many of the features we’ve grown to associate with the director – the amateur actors, the contained stories, the skepticism of the American dream. It’s a “simple” tale of a Chinese immigrant in the pre-digital delivery services era, shuffling… Read more
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Movies of the Week #43-44 (2022)
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022): Martin McDonagh confirms his pedigree as one of the most consistent active directors, producing another remarkable piece of filmmaking. Starring his “usual” leads, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, this movie is one of the several themed around male friendship, a man’s (in)ability to connect and communicate. It’s also about grudges,… Read more
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