Everything seems to tick in Unrest, the latest effort from Zurich-born writer/director Cyril Schäublin. Unrest depicts the working lives of 19th century anarchist watchmakers in the Swiss mountains, laying bare the absurdities of the wage system. Schäublin follows workers as they navigate their working hours across four different time zones in one town—factory time, train […]
High-Rise
In all the mayhem and carnage of High-Rise one scene in particular stands out. As society teeters perilously close to total collapse, we find Dr Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) brawling over a tin of grey paint during the looting of the supermarket. “It’s my paint!” Laing exclaims as he bludgeons a rival to a bloody […]
The Shining: A Vendetta Story
Over the last 35 years, humanity has achieved many great feats: the end of the Cold War, the creation of the Internet, four more identical films in the Rocky franchise. Yet one lingering mystery still plagues our species’ mere mortal brains — Stanley Kubrick’s seminal classic, The Shining. For most people, The Shining is a mildly […]
Douglas Trumbull, SFX Supervisor on 2001: A Space Odyssey
It began with something Stanley Kubrick once said. With 2001: A Space Odyssey, he felt he owed the audience an experience. He wanted to use Cinerama to show people what it was like to fly through space. This was ambitious for 1968, but it worked. The film has certainly stood the test of time, due […]
Revisiting Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining
Stanley Kubrick produced a masterwork of suspense, escalation and visceral horror in his adaptation of Stephen King’s third novel. So much about The Shining has transcended both the horror genre and broader pop culture, from Jack Nicholson’s crazed delivery of “Here’s Johnny!” and young Danny’s “redrum” refrain to Kubrick’s bevy of accomplished cinematographic techniques. Examining the film […]
Lucy
“The average person uses 10% of their brain capacity. Imagine what she could do with 100%.” That was the tagline seen on the posters for Lucy. It’s useless harp on the fact that this ” 10%” theory is absolutely untrue. What matters is that this myth well-known and widespread, and so captured the imagination of Luc Besson’s potential audience. Unfortunately, […]
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 […]
Stanley Kubrick: Iconographic King
An elevator door opens to reveal a river of blood. A bone tossed into the sky by a monkey becomes a space station. A young droog kicks and beats an old man to the tune of Singin’ in the Rain. A crazed aircraft commander rides a nuclear bomb like a rodeo cowboy. An over-the-top drill […]
