The camera glides through the sun-bleached streets of Rome, surveying its architecture, singers, tourists. It’s omnipresent; yearning like an idle god striving for subjects. This divinity chances upon a vibrant party and eventually focuses its gaze on one man: Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), “king of the socialites,” an idle, wealthy journalist/ex-novelist celebrating his sixty-fifth birthday.…
Some more reviews/articles! You may not have come across these if you don’t follow me on Twitter, so I figured it was only fair to link them up. First up, over at the 500 Club I’ve been working on a Spike Jonze retrospective with Jesse Thompson. Jesse covered Being John Malkovichand Where the Wild Things…
The Marked Ones is the fifth Paranormal Activity film, the latest in a series that’s seemingly unstoppable. The reason for the series’ longevity isn’t complicated; people (especially teenagers) love to be scared. These films are primarily a vehicle for frightening its audience, and The Marked Ones is very much in that tradition. It eschews the…
This isn’t going to be a review of the Big Day Out. Unless you have a press pass with VIP access and the like, I don’t think it’s really possible to review a music festival. Even that hypothetical journalist isn’t really covering the whole festival, with four or five groups playing simultaneously across the venue…
[Note: this article contains spoilers for Her, Solaris and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind] I’ve been thinking about Spike Jonze’s Her a lot lately. My review focused on the film’s romanticism, describing it as more a love story than “some thesis on relationships or futurism.” I stand by that statement; Her’s success stems from…
“In the war against terrorists, forget about morality.” The Act of Killing and The Gatekeepers have a lot in common. The Gatekeepers doesn’t have the surreal style of Oppenheimer’s film. Its presentation is traditional: talking heads, stock footage, computer animation. The titular “gatekeepers” are six ex-leaders of the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet; men who…
This isn’t so much a review of Where the Wild Things Are as a justification of a theory. The theory? That the film, Jonze’s third, is at its core a tale of the erosion of the notion of “home” from a child’s perspective. Max, its prepubescent protagonist, finds the tendrils of adulthood encroaching upon him.…
You probably knew someone like Llewyn Davis. Perhaps they have a semi-popular electro blog. Maybe instead they were in a hardcore band in the ‘80s who supported Black Flag that one time. Or in a post-punk group that never quite hit it big. They’re talented, but not as talented as they think they are. They…
The Killing is designed to be confusing. Stanley Kubrick’s third feature concerns a crew of two-bit crooks who plan and execute a heist on a racing track. Their scheme is convoluted enough – six people needing to be in the right place at the right time doing the wrong thing – and is further complicated…
Pieta is more fun to write about than it is to watch. This is a film with an abundance of ideas, all executed with a preponderance of dense symbolism tangled within grim, disturbing imagery that distracts, rather than complements its themes. It’s not a pleasant viewing experience, sodden with violence and sordid sexual themes. There’s…
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