Museum Hours

  At the end of a year in which we all felt rather at the mercy of things much bigger than ourselves, here is my list of the ten best new films that I saw in 2021 (including some at festivals which have yet to be released in the UK) which provided some comfort that humans at their best (and goodness knows we've seen plenty of humans at their worst particularly in what seems to be an ongoing death spiral for liberal democracy in one of the homes of cinema at the behest of a pathetic narcissist who just can't accept that he lost) can entrance each other with empathetic appreciation and aesthetic wonders. In other words the genius of cinema at its best lies in its recognition of the plurality of experience - the very thing that the know nothing reactionaries and authoritarians around the world want to deny us.  Generally, a very strong year probably at least in part because of titles being held up by the pandemic (or more precisely, and sadly, the early waves of the ongoing pande...

  Take things seriously doesn't mean being serious about them all of the time.  In contrast, considering the entire world to be an exercise in irony reduces everything to the purported laugh, the trolling or the rise.  Its ultimate expression is deeply political: the real is so subordinate to the virtual that a country can be ruled from a phone. Real pain is inflicted entirely gratuitously in the name of  slogans, memes and the most prosaic bigotry.  ' Every day we were seeing new evidence that suggested it was the portal that had allowed the dictator to rise to power. This was humiliating. It would be like discovering that the Vietnam War was secretly caused by ham radios, or that Napoleon was operating exclusively on the advice of a parrot named Brian."   Yet the portal (Lockwood's term for the internet) is also the means of growth and development and escape for many. The virtual also has in itself a certain beauty.  No One I...

  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...

  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 vario...

In the wake of the success of Grayson Perry’s Big American Road Trip , we recently sat down in Williamsburg with the still little known Elizabethan divine (no, of course not that  one) at the start of his speaking tour of the Atlantic Coast which had been stimulated by seeing a potential new congregation.  Perkins had just arrived on The Gadfly after a journey of several months. The original plan had been to launch a new ship (prospectively called  The Mayflower) but the whole enterprise had become bogged down in disputes about sourcing the timber and the precise kind of knots to use on the rigging. He entirely understood the need for rigour on these issues but still harboured hopes that the new ship would eventually secure at least a degree of renown. It would certainly be more comfortable.  He looked paler than usual even for someone who generally exclusively inhabits the library and the seminar room and made some initial remarks suggesting a degree of envy towar...

  We caught up with the famously reclusive author  in his favourite cafe in Lisboa to discuss just how disquieting he is finding it to have his heteronyms speaking simultaneously on different parts of social media.  Readers will be aware that Pessoa has so far  created about seventy five characters who speak for themselves in different styles. Some could be said to represent different aspects of an overall personality. He has dubbed them heteronyms.  We met in Cafe Brasiliera where he has now had a statue put up outside to allow his fans to take their selfies without bothering him unduly.  "In the past it was so much easier. Pen and ink on some scraps of paper.  I never used to publish anything, just throw it in a cupboard. Now there is stuff out there before I even know." In some respects Pessoa should be comfortable with the idea of self curation. He's been doing it for decades speaking with different voices at different times. Crucially though he ha...

Vegas. It wasn’t his town. It wasn’t anyone’s town.  That old Italian guy had it right with his rings around hell. This was nothing but a clip-joint full of booze hounds and grifters.  They’d flown in from Phoenix and put up in a two-bit motel on the outskirts, but they needed wheels before they took the run out past Death Valley. So there they were in the diner watching the ball game and listening to the clients bump gums. They put the maps on the bar counter. Three hundred miles before they hit the mountains. They needed a clean sneak the next morning. No clues about where they were going. They hardly knew themselves.  And what if the maps didn’t seem to match up. That was one for the wise heads.  Saturday early they pinned on their diapers and headed down for breakfast. It was quiet as a morgue. Nothing out of place. Plastic. No taste to the food. No smell to the coffee. It looked like a set up. It looked alien. But they had miles to go yet before they reached Are...