They say Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So flattering yourself must be the best form of........Imitation?!
As someone who believes glamourised violence in cinema is pointless, Michael Haneke uses mild violence in his films such that it appears obscene. We arrive to see a movie where we know what awaits the protagonists, and feel this lust on viewing it. Funny Games makes you an accomplice in torture/murder, where (we) the viewers, are the real torturers who could end…
Besides his looks, Marlon Brando was also a pioneer of naturalistic acting. Up until that point he arrived, film acting was extremely melodramatic, literally like a filmed, traditional stage play. When people like Brando and James Dean showed up, they stole the screen because they stood out from every other character in their films, who were trying to play catch up.
Brando's method was really ahead of their time, understanding it was so powerful to act candid and like a…
What-If Relationships (I personally call em "Almost Relationships") are something else, man! Trying to get over someone you never dated can feel worse because this person lives inside this bobble on a pedestal you yourself have placed them on. Its the fantasy of them; you never got to know all their bad sides, so they are perfect in your eyes. Of course they aren’t perfect, but you never got to see that. All you have is this story in your…
Orson Welles once said about Citizen Kane: that it did poorly in capitalist countries because it was too critical of capitalism, and poorly in socialist countries because it was too sympathetic a portrayal of a capitalist!
But that's the conundrum with movies like Kane that seek to critique greed and extreme moneymaking. They can be unintentionally glamorizing, because we live in a capitalist society where people have been raised to view accrual of wealth as something good in and of…
"The director does not provide soul to his movies and he knows it. He needs a female to provide it and he envies them and hates them for it."
- Bjork on Lars Von Trier and her role in Dancer in the Dark
The Nymphomaniac duology is Lars von Trier exorcising his own personal demons and general hatred for humanity! A combination of 4 hours with every scene filled with 45 minutes of dead air! It's downright miserable in its…
Here's the thing: Guillermo Del Toro was/is/will forever be too much of a softie. Stay with me now, this isn't a dig at my Uncle Guillermo, coz I too can relate as a fellow softie lol.
There's a reason why he hasn't made a real "scary" film outside of his Spanish ouevre. He can't help but love his monsters and preen for their appearance. Hell even when he did a kaiju film (Pacific Rim), he seemed disinterested in any social…
We’ll never have movies like John Tucker Must Die again cause actors don’t wanna be silly no more. The powers that be will never invest in raunchy rom-coms or just raunchy comedy in general. Is it because society doesn’t want to be silly anymore? Is it all about the image, how it would look or sound on twitter and inCluSiviTy and diVerSitY?!
Ohhhh who am I kidding, its coz the producers that don’t wanna make movies like this. Its because…
Kathryn Merteul
Buffy Anne Summers
Daphne Blake
Helen Shivers
Cici Cooper
Sarah Michelle Gellar had such a chokehold on pop culture in the late 90's and early 00's with her iconic characters. Can you believe she missed out on the role of Juliet in Romeo + Juliet because she was overbooked? Hollywood of that era didn't know what to do with her once she aged out of the teen icon bracket. Which is our loss, coz she had range like…
You know what I'm slowly realising? A lot of the hyped movies I see lately, it's not that they're terrible or even average (I dread the Zoomer lingo "mid")..... I think for the most part, we as a species have figured out the "formula" for movies, after what, 150 years or so into this medium we call cinema? We know enough to know what works to constitute a hit and what doesn't!
No, what I'm slowly realising is that I…
The Fugitive is 30 years old and remains a watermark in its “wronged man tries to clear his name” subgenre, despite having everything going against it at the time:
- Harrison Ford injured while filming (he wasn't even the studio's first choice as the lead)
- a replaced cinematographer
- 9 writers reworking a script that took 5 years to pen with over 20 drafts
- 6 editors plucked to piece something salvageable.....
any one of these production misshaps would…
"It's not Girl Gets Boy. It's Girl Gets Book."
Whenever I take a director's filmography, I am fascinated by which of their works rides a clean balance between the director's personal sensibilities and the material they're working with. With 2019's Little Women, Greta Gerwig gets to be her full feminist self while being able to comment on the expectations for women to have a romantic ending - by going ahead with a romantic ending - but then also NOT going…