PREFACE
This is the sporadically updated blog of reviews by Harriet, author of In the Aquarium: a londoner's life.
I have kept the reviews separate to enable them to be indexed and therefore more easily accessible (see listing below).
FAVE FILMS DEAD MAN What an idea, the man is dying for almost the entire length of the film, the music is fantastic, its black and white, ideology, mythology, funny, sad, Johnny Depp sex god...
THE DRAFTMAN'S CONTRACT The first Peter Greenaway film I saw and possibly the most accessible. Beautiful set, costumes, direction. Fantastic soundtrack.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE I knew exactly what was going on right up until the last 15 minutes and damn it but then I lost it.
NIGHT ON EARTH Jim Jarmusch made the only film with Winona Ryder worth watching and it had Beatrice Dalle (say no more)
O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? Roar out loud with laughter and tunes that make you love country music. My sister had to sneak out of the cinema ahead of our dad and me cos she was so embarrassed at our laughing.
ORLANDO Quiet, passionate, time travel.
PITCH BLACK Bails and I watched this with its bleached scenery and its whoar factor star. We LOVED him, Mr Diesel take a bow.
RESERVOIR DOGS Tight Tarantino gang heist gone wrong. Great soundtrack. And there's something about Michael Madson, dancing just before cutting off the cop's ear...
ROMUALD ET JULIETTE Truely lovely romance comedy.
THREE COLOURS TRILOGY Blue, White and Red. I liked them all. Quiet stories, beautifully shot.
THE USUAL SUSPECTS Its a story told. And the first time I saw it I didn't get the twist until just before it happened.
Some years ago I went to an awe-inspiring performance called De La Guarda - a mind-boggling display of physical theatre with people dancing in columns of rain, bounding across the theatre attached to bungy chord and running around the walls. The Roundhouse reopened with a production by the same company.
Lights in dry ice, like warm mist. Man walking, speeds up, sprinting, gets shot, stumbles dies. Gets up takes off bloody shirt, starts walking again, then running... He's on a street, all the other people are walking the other way, they keep bumping him, he's knocked from side to side, feel his irritation building up. He crashes through a wall and keeps running. Another wall comes fast towards him, crashes through, explosion of tickertape in a wind, then rain.
Above our heads a woman trapped in a waterbed, outside pressed against her is a man. Sort of sexual, sensual. She's wet and spinning, body pressing down, he's in a suit trying to catch her.
Several people smash up a room. Rythmically rioting.
Man walks along alone, a silvery wall is drawn around the wall. Two women chase each other tumbling, perpendicular to the audience.
Hurded into a smaller space a lid of clear plastic hangs over our heads, a woman spins around in some water, coloured light plays on the ripples, sometimes she's a silhouette, shadow, body print, wet clothes. Sliding, spinning and tabogoning. Four women, riples and splashing. The roof comes down closer and closer, the audience reach up and touch the dancers on the other side.
