Museum Hours

  This year I have adopted a slightly different approach given that it is hard to recall the pre-pandemic period; time has felt both stretched and condensed making perspective harder; films seen in the cinema will always be a different experience to films seen at home; and films seen in sparsely attended secure screenings, whilst a precious opportunity, inevitably feel a little peculiar.  Accordingly, I have one clear winner (seen pre-pandemic in the cinema) and then two groups of eight films seen under widely differing circumstances which seem worthy of note. Groups of eight because I had 16 films on the list but why films are in group one or group two is simply chance although it will be apparent that there are some types of film that I really do like (such as American indies directed by women!) and that this year I think lockdown has actually led to more smaller scale films being made available to wider audiences via early streaming. It also strikes me that whilst I watched a lot of

  The only film I have seen on successive evenings in the cinema and a late juvenile infatuation which has lasted for decades. Yes, this is The Draughtsman's Contract by Peter Greenaway. What is the strange hold of a baroque infused murder mystery  set (oh so precisely) in 1694 over what passes for my adult self? To truly love this film I think you have to take absolute delight in your mind being engaged though your senses, to secure great pleasure from the brain being stroked and tickled by all manner of curlicued tricks and feints.  The overwhelming nature of the film is that it fires up your synapses with aural and visual cues as you allow your mind to be wired directly into a weird baroque fuse box, the switch is flipped, the currents play and the brain lights up.  The film offers a positive cornucopia of sensory inventiveness that takes the kinked pearl at the heart of the baroque and polishes it anew conjuring Purcell with pulsing minimalist rhythms that variously have a coc