Notes from the sketch book

There is a certain kind of film that, in its ambition, in its sheer, manic refusal to be categorised, begins to feel less like a work of art and more like a force of nature. It’s a storm of images and ideas, a hurricane of cinematic energy that doesn't just ask you to watch but demands that you go along with the ride. Paul Thomas Anderson has, for years, been carving out this particular, ferocious territory, a landscape of American obsession and delusion, but with One Battle After Another he has done something altogether different, something so sprawling and audacious...

It’s a peculiar thing, the way certain art, at a certain moment, feels less like something to be looked at and more like a living thing, an environment you can step into. This is the feeling that stayed with me after leaving the British Museum’s Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road. The show is gone now, a shame that's one of the unfortunate downsides of the vast collection at the British Museum. This wasn't a collection of objects to be catalogued and admired from a safe distance; it was an invitation, an almost virtual journey into a world that was...

It feels like going to the movies today is less an event and more a transaction— an overpriced and sterile one. It’s a far cry from the traditional cinematic experience. But tucked away in the heart of London, a city full of fleeting trends and corporate glitz, there's a real gem: the Prince Charles Cinema. This isn't just a place that shows films; it's a place that lives and breathes them. As someone who weirdly loves spending a sunny Friday afternoon in a dark, slightly worn-out theatre, I can tell you that watching a movie on a big screen is...

July is here, and with the longest day now behind us, I've been reflecting on the films I've experienced for the first time since the start of the year.  Some are old classics which until now I just hadn't got around to viewing, there were a few near misses, films that, while interesting, just didn't quite make my final selection. These included the distinctive Australian film The Surfer starring the equally unique Nicolas Cage, the somewhat anticlimactic Nosferatu, the ambitious Mickey 17, and the 1980s cult classic, Night of the Comet. There's a particular quality that elevates a film beyond...

The cinematic dialogue between the American Western and the Japanese Jidaigeki (period drama) forms one of the most fascinating instances of cross-cultural fertilization in film history. This epilogue returns to the genesis of that exchange, which served as a foundational premise for the past few months of articles on Clint Eastwood's evolution within the Western genre.  These notes from the sketchbook examines Lee Sang-il's 2013 Japanese Jidaigeki, Yurusarezaru Mono (literally A Thing That Can't Be Forgiven) not merely as a remake but as the closing of a cinematic circle, where a quintessential Western, itself born from Japanese inspiration, is reinterpreted...