See cinema differently
Director: Andreas Fontana Stars: Fabrizio Rongione, Stéphanie Cléau, Carmen Iriondo There are few films in recent years that have felt as slippery and evasive as Azor. Considering I have a somewhat high tolerance threshold for obtuse and mysterious cinema, you can take that as your first warning. However, if these are qualities that tend to …
Director: David Bruckner Stars: Rebecca Hall, Stacy Martin, Vondie Curtis-Hall Showing nationwide in multiplexes, The Night House isn't the easily-digested Friday night thriller it sorta kinda looks like it is. It's tougher than that. Moodier. Actually, downright morose. It takes you places and makes you think about depressing things. Death, mainly, and the paralysing fear that …
Director: M Night Shyamalan Stars: Vicky Krieps, Ken Leung, Gael García Bernal I'm sat looking at this blinking cursor in a WordPress draft, fresh from a screening of M Night Shyamalan's Old and I'm thinking how, in the reality of the film, I'd have lost days of my life already trying to work out how …
Director: Steven Knight Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Rafael Sayegh Steven Knight has some strange credits behind him. Sure, his last directorial feature was the all-in-a-car character piece Locke (pretty good), and he's made a name for himself writing and directing for shows like Peaky Blinders and Taboo (also critically acclaimed)... but he's also the creator of TV …
Director: Lee Chang-Dong Stars: Yoo Ah-In, Steven Yeun, Jun Jong-Seo The first we know of Lee (Yoo Ah-In) is a wisp of smoke curling out from around a wall in the opening shot. Over the course of two and a half languid, beguiling hours, this sinuous trail will become an emblem of sorts. His chain-smoking travels ultimately take him …
Director: Susanne Bier Stars: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, Sarah Paulson In 1988 John Carpenter made They Live, an apocalyptic sci-fi yarn that spoke of the blindness in society to rampant, soulless consumerism and also complacent, illadvised trust in authority. It received lukewarm responses and achieved a middling box office performance. It has become a cult classic, as …
Director: Daniel Goldhaber Stars: Madeline Brewer, Patch Darragh, Melora Walters Of all professions, the oldest is among the most stigmatised by cinema. Sex workers do not carry much credo on the silver screen, especially in horror where they are almost always unsympathetic victims to whatever raving lunatic is wielding a knife this month. Don't get …
Director: Drew Goddard Stars: Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Jon Hamm And lo, Drew Goddard, director of The Cabin In The Woods, finished watching Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight and thought to himself, "Well, I could do better than that." That's probably not what happened, but it certainly comes close to capturing a little of what Bad Times At The …
Year: 1971 Director: Aldo Lado Stars: Jean Sorel, Barbara Bach, Ingrid Thulin There are better giallo films out there. Purer examples of the genre. But Aldo Lado's Short Night Of Glass Dolls is a devilishly entertaining and under-celebrated example. It's giallo seen through a fun house mirror, contorted into something that might've been just as fitting …
Continue reading "Why I Love… #101: Short Night Of Glass Dolls"
Director: Aneesh Chaganty Stars: John Cho, Michelle La, Debra Messing The horror series Unfriended beat Aneesh Chaganty to the punch with the laptop-based variant of found footage cinema, but that shouldn't diminish how impressive some of the achievements are here. Searching is a new mystery thriller which wholly takes place on a computer screen, the narrative unfolding …
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Stars: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan "It was very Lynchian," I overheard a gentleman tell his wife upon leaving the screening of The Killing Of A Sacred Deer that I attended, as the varied audience tried to get a handle on what they'd just been through. Now, everyone is most certainly entitled to …
Director: F. Javier Gutiérrez Stars: Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Johnny Galecki, Alex Rose What next for the presumed-dead Ring movies? It's a question that Rings - the third installment in the American iteration of the franchise - struggles to answer, flitting from one idea to another and steadfast refusing to settle. There are four or five little movies …
Year: 1976 Director: Jacques Rivette Stars: Juliet Bero (Leni), Bulle Ogier (Viva), Hermine Karagheuz (Lucie), Jean Babilée (Pierrot), Nicole Garcia (Elsa / Jeanne), Claire Nadieu (Sylvia Stern) Genre: Mystery / Fantasy If there is one thing I love, it's dream cinema. By which I do not mean dream sequences within otherwise conventionally made films (which …
Continue reading "Why I Love… #87: Duelle (une quarantaine)"
Director: Tate Taylor Stars: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Luke Evans The Girl On The Train is the latest bestselling 'girl' thriller to get squeezed through the Hollywood machine, but it's the one that comes sputtering out the other end with the least amount of grace, presented to us as a clumsy assemblage of plot holes, …
Director: Jeff Nichols Stars: Adam Driver, Kirsten Dunst, Michael Shannon Having been renewed for a second season, Damon Lindelof and Tom Perotta decided to (or potentially were encouraged to) make some changes to their cult supernatural melodrama The Leftovers. One of the most notable was replacing Max Richter's histrionic theme music with a sourced and overly …
The Lost Highway Hotel 