Most conventional horror films fall somewhere on the sadomasochistic continuum. They either allow the audience to assume the role of sadist, monitoring the physical and psychological torment of the film’s protagonists like Jigsaw peering through his surveillance cameras, or manoeuvre viewers into enduring the victims’ ordeals, much like a masochist cherishing their punishment. While I…
The story told in The Green Prince is an astonishing one. Nadav Schirman’s documentary unfolds like a great John le Carré novel, threading its way through the twists and turns that bind two men on opposite sides of the Israel/Palestine conflict. One is Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a prominent Hamas cleric, who spent…
Towards the end of Noah Baumbach’s latest film, While We’re Young, protagonist Josh (Ben Stiller) laments the feeling of being a “child imitating an adult.” It’s a familiar, facile observation. It’s the kind of thing that people say when their life is absent real concerns – about money, illness or the like – and they’re…
Samba (Omar Sy) and Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) are two people on the edge. Samba, an illegal immigrant whose spent the past decade in France, lives with the perpetual threat of deportation, while Alice, his caseworker, lives with a mental illness that recently culminated in a breakdown which put her career in jeopardy. Each of them…
The world of T.S. Spivet (Kyle Catlett) is certainly inviting. It’s a splendiferous realm of rare bugs, perpetual motion machines and preternaturally gifted preteens, painted in a hyper-saturated palette of green grass, gold wheatfields and cerulean skies. Save for the dead twin brother, who wouldn’t want to live there? Jean-Pierre Jeunet delves into dense fantasia…
Comparing David Cronenberg’s Hollywood satire Maps to the Stars with Ari Folman’s Hollywood satire The Congress is an effective demonstration of how originality and quality don’t always go hand-in-hand. Of the two films, The Congress is far and away the most original, draping an overabundance of ideas offer a scaffolding constructed out of equal parts…
The toxic critical reaction to Neil Blomkamp’s latest sci-fi flick, Chappie, is understandable coming from those expecting the film to offer up a coherent social allegory, a coherent narrative or coherent action. It doesn’t deliver on those expectations. But once you recognise that the sharp satire of District 9’s opening half is an outlier rather…
“It’s all about focus,” Nicky (Will Smith) explains to his willing con artist protégé Jess (Margot Robbie). He’s talking about successful pickpocketing – the way that staring into someone’s eyes will draw their focus to your face rather than your hands, and similar tricks designed to facilitate sleight of hand – but we are expected…
Finding Fela!, a documentary from Alex Gibney (The Armstrong Lie, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) about legendary Nigerian singer/political dissident Fela Kuti, follows the model popularised by the Oscar-winning Searching for Sugar Man. That model, found in the likes of Finding Vivien Maier, The Last Impresario, A Band Called Death – tends to…
The Gambler has earned its fair share of criticism for being yet another film about the problems of a rich white dude. That’s more of an observation than a criticism, since the film is interrogating the idea of how one can deliberately erode this privilege. A fairer remark would be to note that, unfortunately, The…
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