Author: Bryan

  • Dreams (1955)

    I’ve often felt that many of Bergman’s middling films, had they been directed by virtually anyone else, could be another filmmaker’s masterpiece, but Bergman made so many phenomenal films that he more or less overwhelms any possible selection process. Dreams is like that; minor for Bergman, average even, but still outstanding in its own right. Beginning with […]

  • Debt: The First 5000 Years

    David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years is a magnum opus, with a scope so vast that any attempt to summarise it exhaustively, in a review such as this one, is unlikely to do it justice. This resistance to summary is partly due in straightforward fashion to its 544 page length, but length alone is an insufficient […]

  • The Misfits (1961)

    The Misfits (1961) is a beautiful (if hard-to-watch) elegy, not only for the American West it depicts in a slow fade into obsolescence, but also for three of its actors. Plotwise, Roslyn Tabor (Marilyn Monroe) goes through a dismissively quick divorce (for which Reno was already famous by 1931) at the start of the film. Through a […]

  • A Fighting Chance

    I recently read Elizabeth Warren’s autobiography A Fighting Chance which came out in March. Although at times it’s intensely personal, its historical and political aspects are really what make it an engaging read. It presents a compelling history of bankruptcy law in America, an overview of how financial deregulation since the 1980s has fuelled political […]

  • Three Concerts in a Week

    And they couldn’t have been more different. Last Thursday I had the privilege of seeing mclusky* at The Garage in Islington. I’ve been a big fan of theirs since uni, and because they broke up in early 2005 (before I’d ever considered coming to the UK), I figured I’d never get to see them. I […]

  • Basin and Range

    I’ve just read John McPhee’s Basin and Range for my book club. It’s not an easy book to summarize. Part itinerant tour of America’s geology, part history of geological theories, part dreamlike, hypnotic reflection on the formation of the world, it’s a mixture of nonfiction and beautiful prose that’s reminiscent of Carl Sagan.

  • Down to the Bone

    Several years ago I watched Winter’s Bone (2010) and thought it was quite good, opening my eyes to rural devastation in America. I read a bit about it and found out that the director, Debra Granik, had directed a film in 2004 called Down to the Bone. It aired in July on Film4 and I just […]

  • Leviathan

    Quite enjoyed Leviathan (2014). The Book of Job adapted to modern Russia, about losing everything one values in life and all hope for the future. Like Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry, Bergman’s Winter Light, or Akin’s The Cut, it’s about whether a life of suffering can or should be endured (when you’ve lost possessions, people, and […]

  • eXistenZ

    A few weeks ago I watched eXistenZ (1999). I was surprised to realize that it’s the seventh David Cronenberg film I’ve seen. Not that I’ve avoided him, but I didn’t think I’d seen that many. The first I ever saw was The Fly (1986) which I think we had on Betamax when I was young. Unsurprisingly […]

  • A Field in England

    I finally got around to watching A Field in England (2013) this weekend, and quite enjoyed it. It’s an odd, surreal film in which a motley group of deserters from the English Civil War (1640s) flees its violence only to meet stranger ends. With hallucinogens blurring the lines between reality and alchemy, it’s entertaining but not particularly narrative, a bit like […]