Day 1: Arrive at Humberto Delgado international at 12.30pm. Grab some travel passes for 20 euros and it’s 2 metros plus a ten minute walk to Hotel Luena in Arroios. It’s hot. Walk to local cafe for mier de late and first of many pastel de natas. Walk around area and see cost of living…
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Germany, January 2024
I’ve been away for a good long while. The reason for this blog’s creation was taken away when I sold my business. Namely, I had the freedom to travel again, and the necessity of trying to see the world from the comfort of my apartment on my day off was removed. Coupled with the daily…
France, June 2021
watch A Prophet (Jaques Audiard) Tahar Rahimi, Niels Arestrup, Reda Kateb. 2009. Now over a decade old, Audiard’s brutal prison flick hums with vivacity as audibly as it did upon release. Bursting with the style and confidence of an acclaimed auteur in career best form, A Prophet is near flawless. Rahimi’s exceptional debut performance is…
Ethiopia, April 2021
watch Difret, (Zeresenay Mahari) Tizitah Hagere, Meron Getnet. 2014 Admirable chutzpah, a story that needs telling and the film maker’s best intentions, aren’t quite enough to save Difret from its many limitations. The title, translating roughly to courage or daring, can be applied to director and protagonists in equal measure in this at times terrifying…
England, January 2021
watch Withnail and I, (Bruce Robinson) Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Ralph Brown, Richard Griffiths 1987 It’s the end of the 1960’s. The gloriously scuzzy decade that birthed counterculture, anti-authoritarianism and the sexual revolution. The world has changed irrevocably along with those who lived through it. An era is drawing to a shuddering halt and…
Egypt, September 2020
watch Clash, (Mohamed Diab), Nelly Karim, Hany Adel, Tarek Abdel Aziz. 2016 An outsider with little knowledge of Egypt’s political turmoil and social unrest this past decade would likely find ‘Clash’ to be a thoroughly compelling, at times unbearably tense thriller. The based-on-true-events nature of the narrative adds layer upon layer of intrigue and importance…
Czech Republic, October 2019
watch Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea, (Jindrich Polak) Petr Kostka, Vladimir Mensik, Jiri Sovak. 1977 Undeniably charming sci-fi oddity tackling the vagaries of time travel head-on some eight years before ‘Back to the Future’ perfected the genre. Whether or not Robert Zemeckis and co. were devotees of mid 70’s Czech farce…
Colombia, April 2019
watch Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra) Nilbio Torres, Antonio Bolivar, Jan Bijvoet. 2015 Guerra’s Amazonian odyssey chronicles two separate trips up a majestic, mysterious river thus channelling Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. His masterly film is no doe-eyed tribute act however, and very early on he gives Embrace its own distinct personality. The…
China, March 2019
Watch Lust, caution (Ang Li) Tang Wei, Tony Leung, Wang Leehom, Joan Chen . 2007 Lee’s follow up to the Oscar winning Brokeback Mountain is a hugely ambitious and immensely rewarding film. The famed director delivers both halves of the movie title in spades as his slow burn period tale builds toward an erotic crescendo….
Canada, January 2019
watch The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan) Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood. 1997 Adapted from Russel Banks American novel of the same name, Egoyan relocates the action to small town British Colombia on Canada’s west coast. The plot concerns a fatal school bus accident and the ensuing class action lawsuit which causes disharmony amongst a…