Hi, it's Ben. I like films (among many other things), and here are some places you can find me talking about them. I'm a podcaster, film critic/writer, and general swiss army man. Currently based in Singapore but you might find me lost in other countries. Open for writing collaborations/commissions, sidequest projects, and, honestly, almost anything you could think of.
Deep Cut is a director-focused film podcast featuring deep-dive discussions about international, art-house, and independent cinema. I co-host with my friends Wilson and Eli.
Not for the faint of heart, Marina de Van’s film In My Skin challenges our stomachs, hearts and minds. While Wilson squirms, Ben gets to the heart of why Eli loves sicko mode movies. Can one of the most underrated New French Extremism films secretly be deeply empathetic? Links:…
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The Kinetoscope is a newsletter following my personal journey discovering and thinking about cinema.
I’ve struggled in the past with making sense of experimental film. Do they offer a pure sensory experience or something intellectually argumentative? As someone who usually looks for an emotional experience in the cinema, formally experimental cinema, especially the likes of which I’m writing about here, is not…
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I built and currently run filmbulletin.sg which aggregates film listings. Easily find showtimes and film screenings outside your regular cinema all in one place.
★★★★
Honestly should be in the same conversation as many European art house classics, think Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky...
★★★
Tees up a good premise but then doesn't get down and dirty with it. Opting to just gawk at it which spells a lack of courage. Also wonder how different the movie would be if this had been Charlie's…
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
★★★★★
One of the scarier movies I've seen, not because it's really that all that shocking in material, but because it slides the danger of language right in between your ribs: words and art can be honed…
★★★
I felt a little too unmoored to sense the shape of this for some reason even if there are a couple of really strong moments. Part of me feels a lot of this works on paper but maybe emotionally…
★★★
In attempting to be a little more "sober adult" in tone it ends up with a more juvenile construction compared to Do You Remember Love's pure musical melodrama. The characters here are superficially…
Macross: Do You Remember Love?
★★★★
It's 2009, city pop permeates the airwaves, your favorite idol rules the charts, and outside the space mecha fortress you live in giant green incels are at war with killer giant women in eternal…
★★★
While it is ultimately a very emotionally effective popcorn flick, and Gosling can charm a rock, it's also unable to be any more than something that's gonna make money from many people's…
★★★★
A whole lot going here, really loved how much Law just goes for it with this. It's melodrama without pulling punches; immigration as descent into hell (valid); physical displacement triggering…
★★★★
Honestly had no idea if I would go for this, but Stewart proves she's got the sauce using one of the trickiest personal memory styles that can easily fall into gimmick or overbearing and threads the…
★★★★
Aftersun is an easy comparison, but I think this one goes in for more clarity of approach that yields even more fruitfully ambiguous goals. Why go back? Why make movies about (real) life? What are…
★★★★
Made me think of Tarantino but instead of an exploitation edge it comes with a political pulse. There's very intelligent narrative structure choices here, the way it makes a commentary about what is…
Public Conversations is a site-specific podcast experiment, capturing the intersection of a
time, a place, and the people that move through it.
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