I paid attention to the little things in The Force Awakens. Some of these were visual — the small creature with eyes set apart like a hammerhead shark poking its head out of the sand, the vulturous creature picking at the remains of a ship as if it were a carcass. Others were musical, like […]
Is Attack of the Clones Really That Bad?
Last week, Diego Crespo of The Waffle Press invited me to share my thoughts on one of the most maligned Star Wars films, Attack of the Clones. I dreaded suffering through the film again and anticipated a bloodbath of a conversation, but I have to say – even I was rather surprised at my reaction to revisiting one of the […]
Experimenter
If we define postmodernism as art which questions and critiques established formal rules, Michael Almereyda’s Experimenter might accurately be described as post-postmodern. It deconstructs the impulse towards deconstruction; instead, Almereyda asks his audience why they consider some rules worthy of clinging to and not others. The obedience experiments of Stanley Milgram may be the subject, but […]
The Good Dinosaur
While I prefer to judge a film on its own merit, nothing exists in a vacuum. An artist’s work is always weighed against their past efforts or, in the case of Pixar, against the reputation of the studio. And indeed, no review of The Good Dinosaur will print without comparing it to Inside Out. Nor […]
London Film Festival 2015: Observance
Alfred Hitchcock, the master of the thriller film, once commented on the idea of voyeurism in a conversation with Francois Truffaut. He said, “I’ll bet you that nine out of ten people, if they see a woman across the courtyard undressing for bed, or even a man puttering around in his room… They could pull down […]
London Film Festival 2015: Anomalisa
Standing in the queue for the London Film Festival’s mysterious secret screening, all the talk was unsurprisingly concerned with what lay ahead on the mammoth screen at the Odeon in Leicester Square. Packed together like cattle, there were murmurs of The Hateful Eight or, perhaps most widely suspected, The Danish Girl. But of course you can’t second guess the […]
London Film Festival 2015: The Ones Below
Sometimes a film is intrinsically indebted to another. The Ones Below owes such gratitude to Roman Polanski’s pregnancy horror classic, Rosemary’s Baby. Building directly from another film, especially one as renowned and distinctive as Polanksi’s, adds a certain amount of pressure and expectation to a film; unfair or not, audiences expect you to either trump your predecessor or add to its legacy. […]
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
In the opening scene of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), leading man and superspy for the Impossible Mission Force (IMF), jumps onto the wing of a jet and hangs on for dear life as it takes off. A shot of this, incidentally, is featured on one of the promotional posters for this movie. And what […]
Queen of Earth
2015 is turning out to be the year of the 70s throwback. Between the old-school scares and menacing zooms of It Follows and Magic Mike XXL’s offbeat narrative and warm but dim lighting, Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth comes to us at the ideal moment. And like those two films, Queen of Earth aspires […]
Straight Outta Compton
In 1988, N.W.A released the album “Straight Outta Compton.” The album’s titular first track opened with the spoken line “You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge” and ended with the bold full stop, “Damn that sh*t was dope!” In the four minutes in between, NWA redefined more than just hip hop […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- …
- 47
- Next Page »
