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NIE FUR DEN BUS LAUFEN (NEVER RUN FOR THE BUS, Serge Grebiot, 1969)
Serge Grebiot died this week, to little fanfare. The deaths of fellow French filmmakers Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol this year were rightly mourned and their lives celebrated, as two quite different...
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TOO BEAUTIFUL TO BE PLAUSIBLE: THE TALE OF POLLY 21 (Lucy Fedoro, 2006)
'If her body of work offers service as a miscellany of possibility, then her body works as a miscellany of possible services'Norman Mailer'The theory of Six Degrees of Separation slims down to three or...
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THE SQUEEZING OF A BENEVOLENT VENTRICLE SHOULD SUFFICE (Sty Statula, 1932)
Hero: A matinee idol, a super man. Jet-black hair glows blue. Eye-mask doesn't protect his identity, it is his identity, and without it, he is an anonymous citizen. Portrayed by loved strongman...
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PLAYED YOUR EYES (Jim Hertz-Tanning, 2006)
The following is an extract from an article written by the director Jim Hertz-Tanning in The Guardian, on Saturday 28 October 2006:'I am overjoyed to discover that my latest film, Played Your Eyes (a...
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DYSLEXIC FRENCH RED; NE'ER DO WELL (5) (Simone Tzerkovska, 1954)
...the awkward title being a cryptic crossword clue that the heroine is stumped by momentarily at the action's crucial point; an oversight, a slip, as she is something of a black belt in games of...
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OLDER HOUSES (John Hinckley, 1987)
A young man visits a childhood home.'Crossing the road with several other people. The house where we lived between 8 and 14 is here, on a busy main road. In my dream, I know that we have sold part of...
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THE SEARCHERS (Lars von Trier, 2009)
[This review is a near word-for word rewrite of Gavin Smith's review of Gus van Sant's Psycho in the February 1999 edition of Sight & Sound, with all references to those films replaced by ones to...
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ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BILL (Bobby Hope,1982)
Bobby Hope (pronounced /huːp/, like hoop, but with a slightly Dutch 'y' sound in between the two o's, like a crooked nose being framed by two ever-open eyes) has made over a thousand films. He does so...
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THE LIBRARY AT QUEEN OF ALL SOULS (Leo McCarey, 1955)
'Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.'...
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SCALA QUARANTA (Beppe Nona, 1963)
This cannot be approached like other Nona films: Scala Quaranta, sensing our critical apparatus even when our advance is silent, hastily retreats into the undergrowth. Its enigmatic figure belies a...
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LANDFILL (George Eliott, 1974)
Locals debate the meaning of a quarry in a poor small town in the Midlands. It is 1969, and the swinging sixties, a media hologram only filled in with hindsight, hasn't been seen here. A gargoyled...
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MATHEMATISCHE (GEOMETRIES, Cecil Franck, 1960)
This hypnotic film from the solipsistic eye of Cecil Franck is part of a larger exercise in narrative and mind-mapping that the filmmaker returned to throughout his career. Essentially an internal...
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I DREAM OF 'TO THE BRINK' (Peter Davies, 1988)
A boy (Matthew Rhys) dreams about a television show that he is convinced must be real, so rich is the detail in his head. He spends a day walking around his small Welsh town, asking people if they have...
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MENSCH VERSUS MITTWOCH (MAN AGAINST WEDNESDAY, F.G. Hoch, 1930)
There is a sequence in F.G. Hoch's Mensch Versus Mittwoch in which protagonist Eli, played with brilliant care by Emil Jannings, leaves a bar drunk and walks down a Berlin alleyway. He is set upon by...
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GOONER (Peter Harris, 1996)
'Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.' Joyce Carol Oates'The recurring image, the one that says more than...
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M.JAINET'S ETERNAL ZIGZAG (Francois Lepin Eziot, 1949)
Plotwise, this is as simple as those early cinematic experiments entitled Tennis Match or The Motorcar Departs:A man is pursued, endlessly, across borders. We pick up our sympathies from the details:...
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JACKY (Jean Antoine, 1993)
'Obviously narration is only an act of memory; on the other hand, it holds nothing in reserve for future use; it merely derives a little pleasure from the states of dread by trying to formulate them as...
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BABY SHOWER (Leo Katzenberg, 1977)
Todd Rundgren stars in this oddity (produced by Blake Edwards) about a man who, taking the advice of a successful gigolo (Cliff Robertson), begins gatecrashing baby showers in the Cincinnati area,...
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CHOCOLATE CASSETTE (19--)
My dreams are gone. I awoke with a phrase in my head that I knew was the key to unlocking a whole narrative, and repeated it to myself many times. I came up with an abbreviated set of codewords to help...
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FUTUR (Piotr Janas, 1958)
'Forty years and I have learned nothing, nothing useful, about the people, factories, politics and personalities of Hackney. The name has declined to a brand identity. A chart-topper: worst services,...
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ANDY WARHOL'S RYAZANTSEV (David Salle, 1970)
If one were to compile a book of pictures of the Soviet star Tanya Ryazantsev (and indeed someone has, but it might not count: as the evidence is absent from the web in body of image and of thought. He...
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LE BOTOX (Jean Champi, 1957)
In the 54 years it has taken to officially arrive in this country (this country being, variously, America, the USA, or some virtual construct located in both, either or neither) Le Botox (1) hasn’t...
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MONA (Lance Adams, 2012)
Jeff Hudson (Patton Oswalt) is thrilled when he lands a job as a writer for Bona Comics. He's been drawing and self-publishing his own titles for years with little success, and this opportunity is...
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BEAT STAR (George Pammell, 1960)
The first thing you have to do is get an audience with Donald P. Impressario. He's the main brain. He has a stable of lads, all with names conveying undoubted star power. Some will tell you that you...
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EN VANAVOND NEMEN WE BABEL (AND TONIGHT WE TAKE BABEL) (Hans Van Den Boom, 1977)
'Comparisons are reductive. And the critical game of trying to describe a piece of art by naming two others is not only lazy, but cheating. If I were to say that this film is a blending of...
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