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The queer politics of riding Pillion

Filed under: Gender, Movies — Leave a comment
February 12, 2026

PILLION directed by Harry Lighton (UK, 2025)

This movie is promoted as a comedy but I can’t say I saw much to laugh about. It’s not a heavy, soul-searching drama but, at the same time, it pulls no punches in the representation of adult sexual themes.

As a straight, white cis guy (he/him!) my knowledge of BDSM is confined to what I read about or see on screen. Typically, therefore, I have been conditioned to regard bondage, discipline and sado-masochism as the stuff of fantasy and/or perversion. In contrast, dominance and submission have a lighter, more playful character and the basis for innuendoes about pegging or women on top. Certainly, the majority of allusions to these practices in movies are commonly associated with cruelty and/or criminality.

For this reason, what goes on in Pillion is genuinely eye-opening and educational. It doesn’t leave much to the imagination and is far from being a conventional love story. It’s certainly not a romcom nor is it what co-star Alexander Skarsgård has casually referred to as a ‘Dom-Com’.

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Cool quotes for movie buffs

Filed under: Books, Movies — Leave a comment
February 5, 2026

While working on my soon to be published book on British cinema and identity I accumulated a lot of quotes about films in general.

These are some of my favourites:

Illustration from a 1922 article on “The Romantic History of the Motion Picture”: George Eastman was trying to improve the kodak when he hit on celluloid film
  • “Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates. And film culture is not analysis, it is the agitation of the mind” – Werner Herzog
  • “The study of the film as a means to human understanding is not a mere intellectual exercise. It is part of a continuing study we have all got to make in our search for harmony in a tortured world.” – Ross McLean, Head, Films & Visual Information Division, Unesco
  • “Marginal cinema is now the only form of national cinema” – Meaghan Morris
  • “The problem is not to make political films, but to make films politically.” —Jean-Luc Godard
  • “If there’s a corridor, there’s a film” – Céline Sciamma
  • “Films that are entertainments give simple answers but I think that’s ultimately more cynical, as it denies the viewer room to think. If there are more answers at the end, then surely it is a richer experience.” – Michael Haneke
  • “Sometimes film needs the room to dream” – David Lynch
  • ‘I’d rather people feel a film before understanding it.’ – Robert Bresson
  • “Film is a highly evocative ideological sphere. It does not reflect its time or society; instead it reinforces, moulds, twists and subverts the many truths of culture.” – Tara Brabazon
  • “The created world must obey its own logic” – V.F. Perkins
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Marty Supreme: A sham hero for our times

Filed under: Movies, Politics — Leave a comment
January 25, 2026

MARTY SUPREME directed by Josh Safdie (USA, 2025)

Marty Supreme represents everything that is wrong with America right now. He is a trickster, a liar, an immoral fraud and a sore loser.

Does he remind you of anyone?

When he is comprehensibly defeated by a deaf Japanese table tennis champion Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) he throws a tantrum and demands a rematch implying that he was cheated out of victory. It’s hard not to think of Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election result at this point.

How are we supposed to respond to a character who is so self-centred, selfish and manipulative? Are we meant to admire his attempted power grabs and his single-minded pursuit of wealth and fame?

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Everything but the kitchen sink movies

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January 16, 2026

In Britain in the 1960s, films noted for their ‘gritty’ realism were labelled ‘kitchen sink’ dramas. These were mostly set in the industrial north and featured working class characters striving vainly to overcome the drabness and narrowness of their lives. Films like A Kind of Loving (John Schlesinger, 1962), This Sporting Life (Lindsay Anderson, 1963) and A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1961) are good examples. The Britishness of such titles meant that they were received with a certain level of scepticism or ridicule by American audiences. Pauline Kael mocked the manner in which British film critics had a tendency to “salivate when they hear the tinkle of class distinctions.”
Making a tenuous link to these films, I’ve noticed a recent trend in American cinema for what I like to call ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ (EBTKS) movies. In this category I would place Eddington (Ari Aster), Weapons (Zach Cregger), Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky) and One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson). The latter is far and away the best of a bunch of comedy-dramas that contain veiled but non-specific critiques of Trumpism.
They cover topics like rampant consumerism, conspiracy theories, eco-terrorism and survivalist motivated criminality. The filmmakers seem to subscribe to a belief that if enough mud is thrown at socio-political problems some of it may stick. Invariably, however, they merely induce a level of anxiety that is never satisfactorily satiated. The impression that remains is that they depict a world falling to pieces without there being any obvious means of remedying the situations. They are in this sense all disaster movies.
The latest EBTKS movie I have seen is Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You. In this, the awesome Rose Byrne plays Linda, a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She is a therapist and mother to a daughter with a serious, though unexplained, medical condition. She is isolated and overwhelmed in both roles and has to contend with domestic drama, unsympathetic health workers and voices in her head that lead her down self-destructive paths . Her husband is no help. He is literally heard but not seen giving advice on the end of the phone doing work that he clearly regards as more important than her daily battles. The accumulation of calamities speak volumes about the accelerated lifestyles that are regarded as the norm in the modern world.
EBTKS films are about chaotic lives in turmoil that make me think of Koyaanisqatsi (Goddfrey Reggio, 1982), a film made long before technology made aliens of us all. The title comes from a Hopi word meaning “life out of balance” and the images contain vivid warnings of what happens when the pace of life reaches an extreme point at which human beings can no longer handle the pressures. This coupled with a heedless disregard for limits of the world’s natural resources is where the world is right now.
By the side of these movies, the British new wave titles seem almost quaint so may just as well have been beamed in from another planet. What connects the two genres, however, is that they focus on narratives of individuals seeking the ways and means to break free of indeterminate shackles that become tighter the more one struggles to escape.

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The disaster tourism of Die My Love

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December 4, 2025

DIE MY LOVE directed by Lynne Ramsay (UK/USA,2025)

By all accounts, the Scottish director Lynne Ramsay had to be persuaded that an adaptation of the debut novel by Argentinian author Ariana Harvicz was a project worth investing in. I think it shows. She brings her unique cinematic vision to the work but her heart doesn’t seem to be fully in it.

Martin Scorsese recommended the book to Jennifer Lawrence who chose Ramsay to direct her full-blooded rendition of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Lawrence is Grace by name but not by nature. She claws at walls, head butts mirrors, throws herself through a window and jerks herself off when her long suffering husband, Jackson (Robert Pattinson), doesn’t fuck her to order.

The precise cause of her mental illness is unclear. Some have speculated that she is suffering from a from of post-natal depression but this doesn’t seem right because her mood swings and manic energy are visible before her son is born. Bipolar disorder is another possible explanation which seems a little more credible. Her nymphomania also suggests attachment issues.

However you diagnose what’s going on with her, the rage and violence is there for us all to see, If there was an Oscar for self-abuse and unhinged craziness then Lawrence would win hands down. The redoubtable Sissy Spacek as her mom-in-law is a welcome stabilizing influence but no-one can pacify Grace.

Because we never get to know much about Grace’s back story and know very little of her husband’s background it is harder to fully engage with, let alone decipher, all the excesses.

Ramsay directs with verve and energy. The mood changes are bold. The soundtrack is loud. The cinematography is exceptional. But without a soul, the movie doesn’t generate any empathy or sympathy. In consequence, you watch in a state of morbid fascination much like you might witness an unfolding natural disaster on TV happening in a place you’ve never previously heard of.

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