Palme d’Or-winning Japanese drama about a surrogate family living on the margins of modern Tokyo, Shoplifters lulls you in with its gentle intimate rhythm, before dropping big heart-wrenching twists.
Reviews
Amy – Film Review
A crushingly sad documentary about the short and volatile life of Amy Winehouse, who burned bright before a downward spiral of bulimia, drugs and alcohol that led to her death at the age of 27.
Morvern Callar by Alan Warner – Book Review
Some books seem to possess a long-lasting hold over your imagination, and I just keep coming back to this deeply strange, macabre and lyrical novel. This must be the fourth or fifth time I re-visited it over the years, and somehow it managed to leave me with a different impression every time.
The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie – Book Review
I made a mistake in my review of The Murder at the Vicarage: while it was Miss Marple’s full-length novel debut, it wasn’t her first appearance, rather it was in a 1927 short story called The Tuesday Night Club. Later, it became the first chapter in this entertaining collection of thirteen short stories, which together form a sort of episodic novel. Midway through the book, I realised that I have actually read it before, but the details of each story completely evaporated from my memory so it was like reading them anew.
Nightcrawler – Film Review
Jake Gyllenhaal’s unnerving performance as a sociopath for the ages is the main reason to watch this visually sleek film, which rests somewhere in between a dark nihilistic thriller and biting media satire.
Black Narcissus – Film Review
Sometimes you end up watching a movie simply because its title and description sound way too arresting to ignore. “Anglican nuns in the Himalayas” was outlandish enough to draw me into watching this unusual and darkly sensuous 1947 British drama with Deborah Kerr.
New Music 05/2020 – Caribou, Aldous Harding
A vibrant and playful return from one of my favourite electronic artists; a New Zealand folk singer with a penchant for weird.
The Lives of Others – Film Review
An engrossing Oscar-winning German thriller about spying, fear and oppression in the East Germany, in the fittingly Orwellian year of 1984.
Center Stage – Film Review
I haven’t been watching many films lately, with the cinemas all shut down and my favourite DVD rentals dying off even earlier, but now I’m finally streaming! This teen dance drama, celebrating its 20th anniversary this May, wasn’t an obvious choice for the first movie to watch on Netflix, but it proved to be an excellent Friday night pick.
Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found by Cheryl Strayed – Book Review
I really enjoyed the film adaptation of this best-selling memoir with Reese Witherspoon in the lead role from five years back. Now I finally found the time for the original book, the entertaining, emotional and at times harrowing account of a young woman who hiked 1,100 miles alone along the Pacific Crest Trail in the USA.
