Art & Criticism

Movies Watched January

Published on February 14, 2026Leave a comment

One of the things I want to do more of this year is watch movies. To be honest, that’s something I always tell myself to start doing at New Year, but last year for example I only watched my first movie in April and I ended up watching only seventyfour in total. The year before, only fortythree. Not that watching more movies is necessarily a good thing: the point is that I do enjoy watching movies, but if left to my own devices, never get around to it. Easier to just mindlessly consume Youtube shorts or similar mindkilling rubbish instead.

Which is why I started using Letterboxd to log my watched movies and record my impressions of them. And if I’m doing so anyway, why not publish those here as well? What I want to do each month is to spotlight one movie that stood out and then provide a list of everything else I watched that mont. Let me know if you find this interesting.

January’s featured movie

The Metaluna mutant monster, a green skinned beast with crab claws for hands and a huge bulging brain with bulging eyes

This Island Earth (1955)
The Raymond F. Jones novel this was based on was inspired by the way certain Pacific Islanders were caught up in the war between Japan and the USA, with two warring alien races wanting to draw Earth in their conflict. This is completely omitted in the movie. Instead the aliens infiltrating Earth are looking for improved nuclear power generators and their enemy is never shown, nor shows any interest in Earth themselves.

The movie starts when a electronic genius working on a new sort of nuclear reactor, hitches a ride on a Lockheed Shooting Star (nice) when his controls fail as he tries to land. Something external takes over for him and he lands safely, but that’s just the beginning of his problems. Having ordered new equipment for his lab he insteads gets far more advanced, miniturised versions and a nifty catalog that can help him build an “interocitor”, which looks like a futuristic two way television. On completion of it he’s inducted into a conspiracy of the world’s foremost scientists working for world peace.

All of which turns out to be an alien ruse, desparate for new nuclear power sources to enable the force field they need to defend against their ancient enemies. Some faffing about on their planet later, the genius and his new girlfriend/fellow scientist manage to escape and return to Earth, with the alien planet left behind completely destroyed.

The slow drawing in of our protagonist into what’s really going is what makes this movie works. Once the plot takes to space it all happens at breakneck speed; the monster shown above frex only shows up in the last fifteen minutes. Though it doesn’t quite come out and say it, the movie makes it clear these were not the good guys in the conflict and that their enemy’s relentless bombardment of their home planet is deserved.

Other movies watched

Monkey Business (1931)
The Marx Brothers (four of them) are stowaways on a cruisehip to America. Hijinks ensue, but a lot of it is not very funny.

The Black Scorpion (1957)
An unexpected earthquake/volcanic eruption has almost cut off a section of the Mexican countryside. Two geologists, one American, one Mexican are sent to check out what happened and run into the titular giant black scorpion, which ends up threatening Mexico City. Yes, it is all very reminiscent of Them, but an excellent monster movie in its own terms. Watched because Steve Bissette mentioned it in his recent monster movie book.

The Vampire Bat (1933)
A small village is terrorised by a vampire, but the villagers suspect the wrong person. Made for Fay “King Kong” Way as she was going to star in another horror movie and the producers wanted to quickly cash in on it. Way certainly is the best actor in this; not a bad movie though.

The Evil Dead (1981)
The last time I saw this was on VHS. Lacking the humour of its sequels this is just a straightforward horror movie and you’re better off starting with Evil Dead 2 instead.

Urgh! A Music War (1981)
Do you like early eighties punk and new wave? Then watch this.

Day of the Dead (1985)
Students of a local film school get to look behind the scenes of the filming of Dawn of the Dead and interview George Romero, his producer and some of the other staff and actors.

Mary Millington’s True Blue Confessions (1980)
Mary Millington was a well known, successful 1970s stripper/actress who sadly committed suicide in 1979 when threatened with prosecution and jail time. This movie is either a crude crash grap or an earnest plea for tolerance.

The Howling (1981)
As a movie, its parts are greater than its sum. The werewolves once they finally reveal themselves are excellent and make up for a lot of stodginess in the build up to it.

Margaret Tait: Film Maker (1983)
Tamara Krikorian interviews Margaret Tait and goes through her history as a film maker, with generous extracts from her work. Interesting, but did not necessarily make me want to see her films.

Kozure Ôkami: Oya no kokoro ko no kokoro (1972)
Fourth installment of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, here battling a tattooed female assassin. Violent and slightly depressing as it sets things up for the climax in the next two movies.

Waiting for Baby (1941)
A Robert Benchly comedy short about expectant fathers that’s too dated to still be funny.

The Searching Eye (1964)
A documentary about the human eye and imagination, shown by following a young boy playing at the beach. Can’t help but feel following this topless boy around is all a bit pederastic to be honest.

Fang Shi Yu yu Hu Hui Qian (1976)
Why not start your kung fu movie with the climactic battle and just use flashbacks to tell how you got there?

Mosura tai Gojira (1964)
Mothra, last seen in her own movie, here returns as humanity’s guardian against the menace of Godzilla.

One Million B.C. (1940)
A somewhat boring caveman movie whose monster footage has been used in a lot of other b-movies over the years. What is interesting is the plot hinges about a barbaric might makes right tribe being civilised by the feminine influences of a neighbouring one, just as World War Two had started…

All I wanna play is Talk Talk

Published on November 8, 2024Leave a comment

It’s been a grey, cold day today and I’ve been listening to Talk Talk, all five their albums in chronological order. Talk Talk always feels autumnal to me so this was the perfect day to put them on.

The five studio albums from left to right: The Party's Over (1982), It's My Life (1984), The Colour of Spring (1986), Spirit of Eden (1988) and Laughing Stock (1991)

Now critics always go on about how different each Talk Talk album is from the next, especially the last two from the first three. And indeed, when you listen to Laughing Stock (1982)after The Party’s Over (1991), they don’t sound as if they’re made by the same band. But when you listen to them in order, you can see an evolutionary line in there, one album following logically from the previous.

The Party’s Over is very of its time, big flat drums and lots and lots of synths, but it already contains the seeds for the next two albums, It’s My Life (1984) and The Colour of Spring (1986). These two keep the big, open sound of that debut but dial back on those drums and synths. Spirit of Eden (1988) meanwhile is much more withdrawn and quiet, but its A-side follows logically from The Colour of Spring‘s B-side which already started quieting down.

If you only know the big radio hits and then stumble across those last two albums I can understand why they sound so out of left field, but in context they build up logically from those very first beginnings. Listening to them I really couldn’t tell where The Colour of Spring ended and Spirit of Eden began.

In conclusion: Mark Hollis was a genius and Talk Talk one of the best bands from the eighties.

Seeing far beyond his time — John Berger’s Way of Seeing (1972)

Published on July 23, 2024Leave a comment

If you have two hours to spare, spend them watching Ways of Seeing, a four part documentary by John Berger from 1972, ostensibly on how photography has changed the way in which we see art, but moving beyond that to examining the European tradition of oil painting, what its purpose was and how it’s reflected in modern day publicity.

For something itself now fiftytwo years old, from a time when colour television was still a novelty and no such thing as personal computers let alone mobile phones and social media existed, it’s still incredibly relevant. Just that first episode alone, looking at how a painting was changed from a still, silent image rooted to one unique location to something that can be chopped up, moved about, re-contextualised through the ability to photograph and reproduce it, is a revelation. Then in the second episode he takes a punt at how nudes, female nudes, are represented in oil painting: how these are not naked, truthful images of the women they supposedly portray but passive pictures to be consumed by the male owner of the painting. The female figure as a possession to be displayed. And then, echoing what he said in the first episode, that he too uses these painting to send his own messages, he acknowledges the absurdity of his the sole voice on the subject and hands over to a round table of women to discuss this further.

Episode three than looks at the real purpose of the oil painting as a medium, not the lofty ideals ascribed to it, and argues that it is about showing off your possessions as the owner/displayer. That in turn leads to the fourth episode where it juxtapositions publicity and advertisements with the oil painting tradition as a sort of mirror image. If paintings shows the things you already own and you in control of them, ads feed the dream of owning them, the aspiration.

A very heady mix of ideas here and no wonder it had such an impact. It is an interesting rebuttal to the far more traditional view of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation (1969), to which this was in response. Art as a mystical, uplifting activity versus art as a capitalist tool that needs democratisation as much as any other such tool. In this context, the most interesting idea of all may have come from the end of the first episode, after he has argued that images are like words, but:

The images may be like words but there is no dialogue yet. You cannot reply to me. FOR THAT TO BECOME POSSIBLE IN THE MODERN MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION ACCESS TO TELEVISION MUST BE EXTENDED BEYOND IT’S PRESENT NARROW LIMITS.

Fifty years on we got this through social media; now we know that this democratizing dialogue has broken our modern elites’ minds.

“Our collaboration wasn’t a matter of compromise so much as collision”

Published on October 11, 2023Leave a comment

Bill Watterson and John Kascht talk about their working process on The Mysteries, a genuine collaborative process in which nothing was planned and each decision was taken unanimously: “we didn’t know what we wanted but we knew what we didn’t want once we saw it“.

Nothing better than hearing two passionate people talking about how they worked together and managed to create something despite of or maybe because of the huge differences in their prefered way of working.

If only you had a friend like Andrew Ridgeley

Published on July 11, 2023Leave a comment

I watched the Netflix Wham! documentary on Sunday mainly because Mic Wright tweeted about it a few days ago:

The Wham! documentary on Netflix is one of the most beautiful things ever. And as we are having a discourse about men not talking about their feelings or being supportive: Andrew Ridgeley is a perfect example of someone who loved and supported their friend no matter what.

I was young enough in 1982-1986 to not be prejudiced against Wham!; they were just part of the pop landscape I grew up with. So I never had the disdain for their music that the eighties music press seemed to have. However, I did buy into the myths pushed by them: that George Michael was the one with all the talent in Wham and Andrew was just a hanger-on who got lucky. As the documentary makes crystal clear this was completely wrong. It was in fact Andrew who was the handsome one, the song writer, the stylist when Wham began. George lacked his confidence and wasn’t as skilled yet as he was. It was because Andrew was there as an example, as a friend, that George could grew into the superstar and artist he was when Wham ended.

Andrew was the booster rocket to George’s shuttle into star orbit. He lifted him up higher than he could’ve flown on his own, then dropped back to Earth once his job was done. It’s amazing how much he supported George, to the point of ending his own stardom for him. And not only that; he also shielded him from the gutter press. His fuckboi behaviour drew the attention of the tabloids which meant they never found out about George being gay. And being outed as gay in the eighties meant the end of your career. Not to mention continuous harassment from the press.

So cheers Andrew Ridgeley. If only we all had friends like you.