Thor: The Dark World is a film all about gods but, like its predecessor, it’s at its best when it focuses on the foibles of humanity. The film’s first half is spent primarily on Thor’s plane of Asgard – and somewhere called Svartalfheim (Gesundheit!) – and it’s mostly a slog. There’s some overly-serious exposition about…
The opening shots of Y Tu Mamá También stem from the mindsets of its two male teenage protagonists. They’re sex scenes, of course, rushed and frantic; defined by jealousy and uncertainty. But the film – part sex-comedy, part coming-of-age story, part road-movie, part reflection on the class inequities of modern Mexico – has broader ambitions…
You don’t have to look at a calendar to recognise that it’s Halloween: I don’t know about you, but the trickle of horror reviews and features on my WordPress Reader has become a flood over the last week or so. Any regular readers of ccpopculture know that horror is a regular feature here, but I…
Some films are just impossible to evaluate with any kind of objectivity. For me, Toy Story is one of those movies; when that Randy Newman theme kicks in I’m transported back to my youth in a nostalgic rush. Even when trying to view the film with a critical eye, it holds up pretty damn well.…
Martyrs is a unique horror movie. It dabbles in the tropes and traditions of the torture-porn genre (to adopt a misleading descriptor), but inverts the tone and structure. Instead of establishing characters and gradually accumulating dread, it opens in media res with a pre-pubescent girl fleeing in terror from unexplained imprisonment. Instead of giving the…
Days of Heaven is an immense, impressive picture. Only Terrence Malick’s second full-length, the plot would seem to lend itself to the easy naturalism of his debut, Badlands. A young woman named Abby (Brooke Adams), her boyfriend Bill (Richard Gere) and his sister Linda (Linda Manz) travel to a Texan farm to work on the…
It’s difficult to find one redeeming quality in I Spit On Your Grave 2, sequel to the 2010 remake of the controversial, memorably-titled 1978 film. The original wasn’t a “good film,” but it did have a savage relentlessness to it that left an impact. The remake’s modifications to the original were limited to a grimier…
On paper, Prisoners seems like its destined to be forgotten as yet another unremarkable thriller. The film concerns the abduction of two young girls and focuses its attention on two men searching for them; Hugh Jackman as Keller Dover – zealous carpenter and father of one of the girls – and Jake Gyllenhaal as Detective…
Woody Allen’s Manhattan is a dark mirror image of his Oscar-winning triumph Annie Hall. Both are romantic comedies set in New York and both feature Allen and Diane Keaton delivering hyper-literate and observational one-liners. Manhattan is filmed in black-and-white (unlike Annie Hall) and it suits the disparity between the two; Annie Hall is colourful, idiosyncratic…
I expected to hate Cinema Paradiso a few minutes in. I’m not sure what it was. Perhaps the “ain’t-I-a-stinker” grin of Salvatore Cascio, playing young ‘Toto,’ the film’s protagonist? Or maybe it was the syrupy silliness of early scenes involving an exasperated priest censoring films of any “pornographic” kissing scenes. Little by little, the film…
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