Sam WM

Please tell me films that are ACTUALLY scary

NM is for the mothers

a GREAT READ for FILM BUFFS in their EARLY FORTIES

^

hell of a picture!

since it's the season I asked on the film discord for ‘something genuinely scary’, and someone replied ‘finding yourself to be identical in certain ways to your parents’

It’s the law in the UK and possibly the anglophone world in general that you can only have good taste in literature or in films, not both at the same time, which is why I no longer check whether I know what a good book is

We wanted to show a Dino Risi film at one point and the distributor said €800, then when we tried to negotiate said the closest thing you can to ‘fuck off’ in professional email language

I tried to program _Caro Diario_ and the rights holder never got back to me. For some reason this, along with or prohibitive prices, seems to be a recurring problem with Italian distributors, and I wonder how much it has caused Italian directors not to have the repertory exposure they should have.

Here’s two

By the way, all of you who have said the new Paul Thomas Anderson film is ‘actually quite enjoyable’ or some such nonsense, I’m assigning you the first four Joseph Losey films, and I expect 1000 words on his camera direction in relation to the influence of Brecht on my desk a week today.

Great moment in class 1 of Macmahonism school was Bruno pointing out that without Macmahonism we wouldn’t know about King Hu, Kiarostami, Yang or Hou. You can also add Hong to that list.

YouTube video by Joe Boxer Silkworm - Don't Make Plans This Friday (Chop Shop, Chicago, September 23, 2025)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNQt... This is the song from which, as a 13 year old, I learned the words 'hauteur', 'contrite' and 'recidivist'.

all our acts aspire to the condition of music, don’t look back, don’t look back.

where the sociological work that actually needs to be done (who are these people, what unites them, what does that have to do with their media habits) is usually left tacit where it shouldn’t be

‘Middlebrow’ is overused but it’s a well-defined, observable and analytically useful concept. it’s just that when it was invented in Britain it had a relationship to class and education that isn’t transferable to the USA, which is why it can seem more nebulous in the latter context —

Changing Landscapes A short film about a man returning home after decades away.

Changing Landscapes
www.kickstarter.com/projects/cha...

I am pretty certain seeing this in the cinema was the first time I was genuinely bummed out by a film, at least it’s the first time I remember

It was fun to do these

that’s not what commodity fetishism means

thank you!

Between the three countries and god knows how many grant applications something went horribly wrong with that film. I also don’t believe there are 30-somethings living in flats in the Barbican who don’t have imperial treaties or Oxford colleges named after their families.

Saw the former tonight…

Narrow Margin 1 is out. >80k words of real cinema, for free, for you. www.narrowmarginquarterly.com/01

YouTube video by Paul Dickerson Colin Newman - Don't Bring Reminders (Demo)

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Er5z... Everything they say seems so insubstantial, a word of caution

it's funny that Britain is more obsessed with class than any other nation yet English has no word equivalent to déclassement. Like it's too scary to think about.

Here is the mag and our series with M. Moullet mentioned in Criterion’s daily transmission. Our enemies will continue to appear ever more foolish.

A rave review for my latest book COCKFIGHT in @sightsoundmag.bsky.social!! Now available from @fabpress.bsky.social and in regular distribution catalogues in North America courtesy of SCB. So grateful for such a thoughtful piece, I've been lucky with the few reviews it's gotten so far.

also, the characters are just more like people you meet in London than in almost any other film — none of that editorialized soapishness British filmmakers find it so hard to avoid

unbelievable film from the 27 year old (I’m gonna kms) Allan Dwan