Movies

Forever Fellini: Intervista (1987)

MattLeave a comment

And there we are: the final film on Criterion’s Essential Fellini box set, Intervista. It’s not Fellini’s final film: the director would go on to make The Voice of the Moon, released in 1990 and starring Marmitey Italian comedian Roberto Benigni, but even if the decision not to include that one was down to rights issues, Intervista feels like the right end point, seeing how it is about filmmaking, memory and finding that decades have passed and all of a sudden you’re an old man.

Also, quite literally and more than any other film by the director, Intervista is about the man himself: Federico Fellini.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #233: Portals of the Past

samlinderLeave a comment

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!


ELSTER
And she wanders. God knows where she wanders. I followed her one day.

SCOTTIE
Where'd she go?

Elster almost ignores the question as he looks back to the day.

ELSTER
Watched her come out of the apartment, someone I didn't know... walking in a different way... holding her head in a way I didn't know; and get into her car, and drive out to...
(He smiles grimly)
Golden Gate Park. Five miles. She sat on a bench at the edge of the lake and stared across the water to the old pillars that stand an the far shore, the Portals of the Past.
Sat there a long time, not moving... and I had to leave, to got to the office. That evening, when I came home, I asked what she'd done all day. She said she'd driven to Golden Gate Park and sat by the lake. That's all.
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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Fear is the mind killer

MattLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

It can’t all be films: in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Matt wrote about his happiest childhood memories, which are largely of the times he spent at the library or reading books he got from the library. And what better trailer to feature with respect to cool libraries than this one?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #92: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Does a killer title make for a killer movie? When Philip Kaufman adapted Milan Kundera’s early-’80s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being for the big screen, it made a huge splash at its release in 1988, drawing audience numbers that, at this point in time, are almost unthinkable for a drama focusing on the lives of three characters in communist Czechoslovakia – even if that drama is as erotic and adult as Kaufman’s film was. And how well does it hold up in 2025, both for those who’d seen it at the time and those who are only just seeing it for the first time? Join Sam, Julie and Matt as they discuss the film, its young stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin, the mirrors and bowler hats, and the Bourgeois dreadfulness of late 1960s, early 1970s Switzerland. What made The Unbearable Lightness of Being such a success at the time? Why is it barely talked about almost 40 years later?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: If Tom Cruise is 62 years old, how old does that make me?

MattLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

Being a parent isn’t just about introducing your kids to all the books, films and series you loved when you were their age: in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Melanie wrote about the weird and wonderful shows her (by now 14-year-old) daughter has introduced her.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Galactus ate my baby!

MattLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

This week, Alan risked the wrath from villagers and… older powers in order to bring us a Six Damn Fine Degrees post about folk horror, touching on recent movies Starve Acre, Fréwaka and I Saw the TV Glow.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: April 2025

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Back in 2022, we did our first summer series: the Summer of Directors. The episode led by Alan focused on Robert Altman, the “grizzly-bear genius of American cinema”, as Ryan Gilbert put it in The Guardian. Back then, we discussed three of Altman’s most iconic ’70s films: satirical neo-noir The Long Goodbye, revisionist Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville, a scathing satire of America through the lens of the country music industry. At the time, we gave a shout-out to one of Altman’s less well-known films, his uncanny psychological drama 3 Women, but we didn’t discuss it in detail. This month’s espresso podcast remedies this: join Alan and Matt as they talk about Altman’s most dreamlike film. 3 Women (1977), starring Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule, is enigmatic and borders on the surreal, echoing and prefiguring the identity-blurring nightmares of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. What did Matt and Alan make of this strange, eerie film, and how does it fit in with their idea of Robert Altman?

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #230: Modern Folk Horror

Alan Kuhl GrahamLeave a comment

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

A world away from the urban landscape and its City Lights lies the genre of Folk Horror. But what is “folk horror”? One of the trickiest aspects of a discussion about any film genre is to pin down a good definition. I do rather like what Wikipedia succinctly offers on this score at the start of their entry on the subject:

“Folk horror is a subgenre of horror film and horror fiction that uses elements of folklore to invoke fear and foreboding.”

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Domo arigato, Mr Roboto

MattLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

This week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees was the kind of post that wouldn’t even need a byline: it’s immediately clear that this post about Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights is one of Julie’s.

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