World Cinema Sunday (21/8)        00:30    BBC2      Foxtrot (2017) Directed by Israeli filmmaker Samuel Munoz and winner of the Grand Jury prize at Venice. Tel Aviv couple Michael (Lior Ashkenazi) and Dafna (Sarah Adler) receive a visit from Israeli Defence Force officials to tell them their son Jonathan has been… [continues]

World Cinema Monday (15/8)          01:10   Film4    120 BPM (2017) A young gay activist in 1980s Paris joins a group to campaign for action against the rising tide of AIDS deaths and finds that, like many such organisations, it rather accommodates the industry it is supposed to be challenging. At the… [continues]

World Cinema Monday (8/8)           00:15    Channel 4    Bombay (1995) This week I’ve found myself writing about a lot of films I haven’t seen, and this is one of them. It sounds good. A Tamil-language drama with songs, by Mani Rathnam, it was one of the first subcontinental films to… [continues]

World Cinema Saturday (23/7)        23:15    Film4    Sputnik (2020). Not seen this, but I want to. I like Russian science fiction. One of my little projects is to acquire the film of Zamyatin’s extraordinary We, which was the first book censored by Lenin after the Revolution. Sadly, the cultural boycott has made doing business with Russia… [continues]

World Cinema Saturday (16/7)        23:15   Film4    Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020). A delightful Japanese micro-budget time-travelling comedy about a young bloke who is suddenly addressed by a face on his iMac. It’s himself, two minutes into the future. He shows his friends in the cafe where he works (above). A… [continues]

World Cinema Monday (11/7)         00:50   Film4           Blade of the Immortal (2017) (pictured) Ultra-violent Japanese nasty. ‘It’s a stylish slash fest, which delivers visceral thrills along with quietly striking moments of beauty,’ said Wendy Ide in the Observer. Well, good for Wendy. I hate these films. The Japanese people… [continues]