First off, a disclaimer of sorts; I've never reviewed a Woody Allen movie before. There are two good reasons for this, and I hope to set aside both in order to do this film justice. The first is that I haven't seen many Woody Allen movies. The second is that I haven't seen many Woody … Continue reading Review: Blue Jasmine
How I Live Now is the latest film from Kevin MacDonald, the Scottish documentarian-turned-movie-making-machine whose forays into dramatic features has so far failed to cohesively ignite. For all it's Oscar-baiting attention, The Last King Of Scotland largely left a sour taste in the mouth, while State Of Play and The Eagle can hardly be hailed as outright successes … Continue reading Review: How I Live Now
Nine years ago Shane Carruth baffled as many people as he enthralled with his D.I.Y debut Primer, a fiercely intelligent low-budget science fiction piece in which experiments with time travel spiralled down into one another. It was an admirably complex piece of work from a man who was not afraid to pose conundrums or ask … Continue reading Review: Upstream Color
Year: 1961 Director: Alain Resnais Stars: Delphine Seyrig (A), Giogrio Albertazzi (X), Sacha Pitoeff (M) Genre: Mystery / Drama / Surreal Film It begins with one of the most strangely arresting openings in cinema. As credits give way to Resnais' extraordinary visuals of the interiors of a lavish old hotel, a disembodied voice intones repeated … Continue reading Why I Love… #55: Last Year At Marienbad
You've got to wonder about Roland Emmerich sometimes. Not content with blowing up the White House with an alien laser beam in Independence Day, he's now returned to America's most famous residence to fill it with terrorists and play a slapstick game of Die Hard, gleefully blasting away masonry and smashing chandeliers. Anyone might think that there … Continue reading Review: White House Down
One of the most shocking things about James Wan's Insidious was just how much fun it was. It popped up a couple of years ago amid the usual glut of also-ran horror movies offered by Hollywood and became something of an instant hit. A large part of that success (but at the same time the … Continue reading Review: Insidious Chapter 2
Year: 1973 Director: Sidney Lumet Stars: Al Pacino (Frank Serpico), John Randolph (Chief Sidney Green), Cornelia Sharpe (Leslie Lane), Tony Roberts (Bob Blair), Jack Kehoe (Tom Keough) Genre: Crime Drama / Biopic There are many reasons for Sidney Lumet's Serpico to appear in this series. So many, in fact, that it's difficult to know where to … Continue reading Why I Love… #54: Serpico
I like silence. More than that, I'm interested in silence. I enjoy listening to experimental works that toy with how silence can be manipulated, and have read books about the nature of silence. Whether it can exist in any complete sense. How perceived silence affects our reaction to the sounds around it. How, like music, … Continue reading Review: Silence
