There was a heaviness in the air when I put on The Grey Blu-Ray. It was Monday night; not long after the news of Bowie’s death, not long after a friend’s father had passed away. The air was warped by the weight of the precariousness of life, particularly given my own circumstances; I was visiting my parents…
Tom Hooper might’ve made a great painter. Like the protagonists of his latest film, Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne) and Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander), he has an eye for colour and composition that produces some memorable images. But cinema is about more than striking individual images; it’s about, among many other things, how images combine and…
Brian De Palma’s films are an acquired taste. That’s especially apparent with Body Double, an uninviting experience for those unfamiliar with the director with plenty to offer those who’ve come around to his distinctive style. As a straightforward (and rather lurid) thriller, it’s somewhat unsatisfactory, hamstrung by its inherent implausibility and its leading man’s anti-charisma.…
“Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry.” The above quote appears roughly midway through The Big Short, Adam McKay’s star-studded, irreverent take on 2008’s global financial crisis. It’s an effective encapsulation of a film that operates as the rare piece of ‘edutainment’ that’s both legitimately educational and entertaining while providing a self-reflexive…
Paul Feig has a lot to answer for. Judd Apatow too, come to think of it. These two men, who cut their teeth on Freaks and Geeks, have cast the mould for modern American comedy: in Apatow’s case, extended tales about arrested adulthood, in Feig’s case, putting women front-and-centre of the kind of crude comedies…
“I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength.” That quote is spoken by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) in The Force Awakens, the long-awaited seventh instalment in the Star Wars franchise, but those words could easily have been put into the mouth of almost every prominent character in the…
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant sets out to chart the farthest frontiers of humanity, stranding Leonardo DiCaprio’s bearded, badly-wounded protagonist in the wintery American wilderness and closely observing his desperate quest for survival …and revenge. When The Revenant focuses on the minutiae of survival in the wild – from cauterizing one’s wounds with burning grass…
Iris idolises Iris Apfel. So, it seems, does everyone else. At a glitzy fashion event, J.Crew creative director Jenna Lyons and fashion-enthusiast and hip-hop legend Kanye West alike dote on her. “She’s the perfect example of the intersection of fashion and interior design and art,” says one of documentarian Albert Maysles’ talking heads breathily. All…
Eden feels kinda pointless. Maybe that’s the point. Following an aspiring garage DJ, Paul (Félix de Givry), a slender surrogate for director Mia Hansen-Løve’s brother and co-writer Sven, the film’s first half largely eschews the typical party aesthetics – the neon-streaked dancefloor, the incandescent beaches – for overcast streets and rumpled apartments, like something out…
Great Christmas films are always about family. Whether it’s the traditional soppy Santa Claus tale à la Miracle on 34th Street, Will Ferrel trying to reunite with his dad in Elf or John McClane blasting through Eurotrash terrorists to get back to his wife in Die Hard, at these films’ core remains a deeply conservative…
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