See cinema differently
Last year one of the greatest home invasion movies of recent times dropped at the cinemas, only to be greeted with unjust indifference from the general public. It was called You're Next. Unfortunately, a lot of that film's ideal audience were in the next screen over watching The Purge, a vastly inferior horror flick which became one of …
Year: 2002 Director: Park Chan-Wook Stars: Song Kang-Ho (Park Dong-Jin), Shin Ha-Kyun (Ryu), Doona Bae (Cha Yeong-Mi), Lim Ji-Eun (Ryu's Sister), Han Bo-Bae (Yu-Sun) Genre: Crime Thriller In 2002, The Coen Brothers released one of their least loved films; a screwball romantic comedy starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones called Intolerable Cruelty. The film itself …
Continue reading "Why I Love… #69: Sympathy For Mr Vengeance"
Jia Zhangke's latest film, A Touch Of Sin, has caused something of a stir in his native China, where censors refused the film's screening. It seems generally believed that this is not only because of the film's violence (which is considerable at times, but far from boundary-breaking), but also thanks to the greater depiction of a …
How To Train Your Dragon was one of 2010's very best surprises. Dreamworks' animated output up to that point had done little to particularly bother the competition elsewhere, nor garner much praise from critics, yet Daniel DeBlois and Chris Sanders' adaptation of Cressida Cowell's series of children's books scored them a word-of-mouth success, even as the …
Begin Again opens a tad abruptly (and somewhat unpleasantly) with Steve (James Corden) holding court at an open mic night in a dimly lit, cosy-looking bar in New York. The sight of Corden is worrying. Of all the things I want to see in a film, he's not even nearly on the list, but it's …
It often feels as though Richard Linklater is taken for granted. Early features such as Slacker and Dazed And Confused earned him respect, but of a particular kind. A seeming begrudged acceptance that, yes, he'd done quite well for a guy who, really, isn't the sort who becomes a cinematic auteur. Linklater appeared too easy-going. As if …
Cold In July, directed by Jim Mickle, is one of the most confusing films I've seen in a while. Not because the plot is complex or hard to follow (and believe me, we'll come back to the plot later), and not because I missed some important information at a pivotal moment. Instead the confusion arises from …
