Derek Jarman’s most vital, visceral work leapt off the big screen in the most exciting way imaginable. If anyone tells you that experimental cinema is boring or unwatchable then they clearly haven’t seen The Last of England. If you watch any of Derek’s films, make it this one. And be sure to play it LOUD.
35mm print at the GFT.
I was completely blown away by my rewatch of Julien Donkey-Boy last night. So much so I watched it again this morning. Incredible. It must have been at least 15 years since I last saw it and my appreciation for Harmony's out of the box filmmaking (sorely needed in a world where Anora is considered great art) has only grown since then. It's probably his bravest experiment and finest achievement. Aesthetically it's certainly his most strikingly beautiful film. The way they use the…
When I was thirteen years old during an English class, we were assigned a public speaking project where we could discuss any subject of our choosing. Being the precocious viewer I was at that age, I chose Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, a film I was obsessed with. In many respects Greenaway is Britain’s quintessential arthouse auteur. His expansive, highly idiosyncratic, and exquisitely pretentious body of work had only the equally talented, if somewhat unruly, Derek…
I’m fascinated by the idea that Bernado Bertolucci was working out some deeply repressed boy love in his work. You see it in The Conformist; 1900; The Dreamers, and most impressively in La Luna. The scene in the bar where Matthew Barry’s strung-out teen is seduced by an older man while dancing to Night Fever by The Bee Gees is a diamond. And crucially, Tarkovsky hated it, choice quote from his diary: “Saw Bertolucci's La Luna. Monstrous, cheap, vulgar rubbish.” What more do you need?
