In Cosmos, the final film from director Andrzej Zulawski, failing law student Witold (Jonathan Genet) takes a vacation in a renter’s home. Disillusioned, he abandons his studies to pursue writing a novel that mirrors his time at the house. But his time in the house proves to be psychologically taxing.
Strange visual motifs dominate the film. Bugs crawl over food, hanged animals appear intermittently, one character is Continue reading Cosmos (2015) Movie Review
Genesis (Cliff Curtis), a severely bipolar man, walks through the rain into a game shop after escaping from an institution. He begins playing a game of chess with himself, mumbling all of the possible moves to himself.
The savant is later released into the care of his brother, who has social troubles of his own that leaves little time to accommodate Genesis. Genesis finds an old friend who runs a chess club, and he strives to Continue reading The Dark Horse (2016) Movie Review
When his wife dies in a car accident, New York white collar type Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal) falls into an erratic depression. At the hospital, after hearing of his wife’s ill fate, Davis uses a vending machine, and gets hung up when the machine disallows him his peanut M&Ms.
After writing the company several lengthy and personal letters, a customer service worker (Naomi Watts) Continue reading Demolition (2016) Movie Review
The first person POV film Hardcore Henry follows the eponymous character (here, the camera is a character) after an unexplained accident renders him maimed. Given cybernetic enhancements to essentially his entire body in a series of jump cuts, Henry must fight to save the wife (Haley Bennett) he doesn’t remember from the corporation that provided the parts that built him.
For the most part, it is your basic action movie plot: the untethered yet reluctant hero, the damsel in distress, the rugged in-the-know guru (or about a dozen of them), and the clearly immoral villain.
The gimmick, then, is the cinematographic choices. The real question, then, is: Is this a gimmick film? Continue reading Hardcore Henry (2016) Movie Review
Note: This article goes in-depth into an analysis of The Apple‘s various plot points and subtexts. As a result, it is littered with spoilers. You have been warned.
Additional Note: This is a multi-page article. The links to the succeeding pages can sometimes get buried at the bottom of the page.
The Apple is the feature film debut from then 18-year-old Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf. An influential cog in the machine of Iranian New Wave, as well as part of a family of filmmakers (her father is equally influential director Mohsen Makhmalbaf), Samira Makhmalbaf’s first film delves into the nuanced world of children raised in isolation in a docudrama style. Using a real-life family as both actor and subject, Makhmalbaf captures on film a fictional reality of two children first entering society at the age of 12 at the same time that the real-life children were first engaging with the world outside their home.
A BFI review of The Apple by John Mount correctly comments that the film focuses “firmly on its subject rather than on its making,” in an industry climate when Continue reading The Psychology of The Apple (1998): Abusive Paternalism
In Eye in the Sky, a joint security task force between the UK, the U.S., and Kenya plan a combined drone and ground strike on a meeting of high-level Al-Shabaab terrorists in Nairobi. When the operation starts breaking down, the scenario boils down to a political debate over whether or not to utilize a drone strike to take down the targets.
The film attempts topical commentary inside the drama-thriller framework it is working with. What works most readily is Continue reading Eye in the Sky (2016) Movie Review
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