It wasn’t like the last time I’d visited the British Film Institute. The buildings were all the same, massive cubes of concrete sitting along the bank of the Thames. Their façades were aglow with pink and blue lights, as I remembered them last time, glinting off of the river as we crossed Waterloo Bridge. But […]
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Halfway through Rogue One, I started to futz with my hair (my habit for coping with boredom). After another 20 minutes I’d flipped the part of my mophead from right to left. This movie—a reckless jaunt through the Star Wars saga’s style with none of its substance—felt like an off-brand version of Disney World’s Star Tours ride. My nausea-prone stomach begged for mercy. […]
Hannibal Review: “Primavera”
If last week’s “Antipasto” was the appetizer for Season 3 of Hannibal, “Primavera” is the first course. The two episodes complement each other in many ways, the most obvious being that the first focused entirely on Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) while the second shifts its attention back to Will (Hugh Dancy). Hannibal’s melancholic longing for Will danced around […]
Hannibal: “Antipasto” Review
“You no longer have ethical concerns, Hannibal. You have aesthetic ones.” “Ethics become aesthetics.” For a show so determined to distance itself from reality, Hannibal got meta-textual with this brief exchange in its Season 3 premiere, “Antipasto.” Bedelia (Gillian Anderson), former therapist to Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) and his traveling companion as he hides out in […]
On Hooper, Refn, and Cinematography
This conversation got started when I, a long-time critic of director Tom Hooper, posted a link that lambasted the cinematography of Hooper’s films. Søren didn’t see the issue, and defended Hooper. The debate touched on director Nicolas Winding Refn, whom Søren found much more visually irritating than Hooper, as well as whether or not interesting […]
The Hunt
What would you do if a child erroneously accused you of abuse? Nobody should have to answer a question like this. Unfortunately Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen), the kindhearted protagonist in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt, finds himself in this very situation. Following a direct accusation from a young girl named Klara (Annika Wedderkopp) in his kindergarten class, […]
