Matt Mansfield

i've written some capsules on the three Sho Miyake films I've been able to track down and watch over the past week or so — an excellent filmmaker! thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2025/09/sho-...

YouTube video by dinner - Topic turn blue on

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsjD...

The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, 1960)

watched Rosa la rose, fille publique (1986) tonight, which is such a great, beautiful, devastatingly sad movie, and the best thing I've seen all year — need to see more Vecchiali ASAP

i have never pre-ordered anything faster in my life

caroline 2, by caroline 8 track album

v late to this, but caroline 2 is such a great, strange album that i haven't been able to stop listening to all day caroline.bandcamp.com/album/caroli...

stormy skies on a gloomy saturday morning is maybe the ideal backdrop to say that the new Alex G album is really very good

Strange Days #21 June 2025 | Heavy Loads

wrote about Death Stranding 2 and Paul Auster and Test Match Special for this month's letter, pls enjoy thistheaterishaunted.substack.com/p/strange-da...

movies have fallen out of my life to an extent this year but I'm still checking in from time to time — some May / Jun favs from a small pool:

Tattooed Life (1965)
Tokyo Drifter (1966)
Nomad (1982)
The White Balloon (1995)
Blue Spring (2001)

i think the music opinion i am most disappointed in myself for holding (but will continue to hold it anyway) is that i really like The 1975 in spite of the many reasons not to (i am watching Glastonbury on iPlayer on my sofa with a hangover and a berocca and this headline set is going down a treat)

having fun with lists again

missing Haruomi Hosono in London because I'm going to see The Maple State in London, or the old me defeating the new me once again

beat Persona 3 Reload tonight, hard to be rational about something that demands 100+ hours of time but i thought it was a pretty spectacular game about the value of time + using it wisely (will be playing something much shorter next)

i've got the Taisho trilogy on blu-ray ready to go, v keen to dig into it!

oh extremely, the variety has gone but the quality remains

dry run continues, but some fresh joys from Mar / Apr to celebrate (chronological):

Youth of the Beast (1963)
The Man on the Roof (1976)
Yokohama BJ Blues (1981)
The Man From Majorca (1984)
The Eel (1997)
In The Shadows (2010)
Black Bag (2025)
Sinners (2025)

instagram keeps pushing me slow asmr adjacent videos of people walking around cities very quietly and you better believe i am watching every single one of them from start to finish

hadn't listened to Blonde for a while, but threw it on today and it's still so so good — wild that it's been nearly a decade since it came out

incredible title!!

ah nice, ive got the taisho films on blu-ray

I spent the best part of a decade resisting the work of Seijun Suzuki because Tokyo Drifter screengrabs popped up a little too often on Tumblr back in the day, but I just watched Youth of the Beast and had a great time — which begs an obvious question: what are his best movies?

Strange Days #18 March 2025 | Taking Notes

Radiance are doing it again (Rosa La Rose! The Beast To Die!). Coincidentally, I wrote about two of their previous releases in this month's letter (the hit rate is v v strong) thistheaterishaunted.substack.com/p/strange-da...

maybe says a lot about how i'm feeling about nintendo these days but i'm more excited about the prospect of gamecube games on the switch 2 than basically anything else

having just reacquainted myself with it, i'm happy to report that last year's Balance and Composure album is v v good

A ★★★★ review of Black Bag (2025) Several times, Soderbergh points the camera squarely at a light source, distorting and abstracting the image, and that really is the name of the game here. A film in which everything is visible in the...

feel like i dropped off Soderbergh when his movies started going straight to Sky Movies so I now have a lot of gaps, but after having a good time with Presence I had an even better time with Black Bag — maybe I gotta go back letterboxd.com/mattmansfiel...

Materialists looks good, James L. Brooks is back. 2025 already looking to be a big year for the good old romantic comedy.

not seen a lot this year so far, but Jan / Feb new to me favs (chronological):

Pale Flower (1964)
The Conformist (1970)
Tausend Augen (1984)
Suzhou River (2000)
Takeshis' (2005)
In The Wake (2021)
Afternoons of Solitude (2024)
Hard Truths (2024)
The Shrouds (2024)

i've been trying to write more this year + share it where it makes sense to do so, so here's a quick piece on Takeshi Kitano's three semi-autobiographical films from the late 2000s, each one fascinating in a different way thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2025/02/kita...

I didn't realise I wanted this and now it's all I think about, but I would very much like to see the Radu Jude Rossellini movie

International Film Festival Rotterdam 2025 Reviews of two films I saw at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2025: Albert Serra's Afternoons of Solitude and Wei Shujun's I Dreamed A Dream

last week i went to Rotterdam for a few days of IFFR + I've written about two of the best films I saw there: Albert Serra's Afternoons of Solitude + Wei Shujun's I Dreamed A Dream thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2025/02/inte...