Frame by Frame

I’m going to level with you: This film changed my life. Late one Winter night early in my first year at college it transported me to a new plain of experience where everything suddenly appeared richer, more deliberate and beautiful than I had ever thought possible. As ever, this is a stream-of-consciousness watch-through of one of my favourite films in an effort to unpack and more deeply appreciate how much it truly means to me. Stalker is a special movie for which my love is limitless- and I hope whoever’s reading this already has or can one day find a film that means as much to them as this one does to me. Let’s get to it.

Part of what I love about The Long Goodbye is that I used to hate it. I came up through a lot of ultra-precise early 2000s smash-cut air-tight film-making where any breathing room was relegated to the end credits, so American auteur Robert Altman’s loose lucidity lost me time and time again when I first made my way through his movies. Flash-forward to years later after finding complete acceptance with whatever the hell cinema wants to be and I find a true love for his unique use of the form. Always utterly at ease with itself, his greatest work somehow allows the carefree to coalesce into complete transcendence and then lounges back like it never happened. Case in point: The Long Goodbye might just be the funniest movie I’ve ever seen- and it only gets there because it never feels like it’s trying to be. Let’s get into it…

Seriously, who couldn’t love Point Blank ? Dropping into the psycadellic soup of the late-60s right as New Hollywood was first revving into gear, this deadpan mindfuck was a daring early dose of what the industry would finally be putting their faith in over the next decade. In a way it’s a perfect example of New Hollywood’s cultural shockwave: Kicking a standard American revenge thriller through experimental European influences and watching the sparks fly as the fallacy of cheap crime fiction is torn to pieces by the frenzied delusions of dead men. Let's get into it...