The Salvation reminded me of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. Not, I should hasten to add, because it approaches the mastery of Leone’s films, but rather in the way a foreign filmmaker (director Kristian Levring is Danish) approaches an acutely American genre from a unique perspective. There are some Leone similarities in how Levring’s screenplay (co-written…
The Zellner brothers’ latest feature owes a considerable debt to the Coen brothers’ Fargo. That film primarily serves as narrative impetus; discovered (somewhat improbably) as a waterlogged VHS relic, it stirs the fantasist impulses of Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi) and sends her on a journey in search of ‘hidden treasure’ – the cash-laden suitcase buried by…
Studio Ghibli’s Isao Takahata’s adaptation of the ancient folk tale “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter” is rendered in gorgeous hand-drawn animation that recalls both a children’s picture book and Japanese woodcuttings. This aesthetic and the title suggest the film’s shift in focus – rather than telling the story of the bamboo cutter who finds…
Avengers: Age of Ultron is, for better or worse, the culmination of Marvel Studios’ approach to commercial cinema. By this stage, their much-discussed directorial departures – Patty Jenkins from Thor: The Dark World, Edgar Wright from Ant-Man – and the homogeneity of their output make it clear that this is about as far from auteurist…
Elijah Wood sure has slipped comfortably into B-movies after his stint at the Shire, hasn’t he? When I first stumbled upon Open Windows, I was expecting something along the lines of Wood’s bomb-in-a-piano thriller Grand Piano. There are similarities: both films are quintessential B-thrillers, escalating a catchy premise into something tense (and a little silly).…
Living is Easy with Eyes Closed resembles an old Polaroid of the Andalusian seaside, yellowed by the summer sun and age alike. Despite its title – cribbed from “Strawberry Fields Forever” –it cuts through any nostalgic haze to present a clear-eyed portrait of 1966 Spain, its beauty and its injustice. The story told is an…
Xavier Dolan’s fifth film, Mommy – released when the director was only twenty-five – is certainly his most mature work of an already outstanding filmography. An intimate portrait of the tenuous triangle formed between Die (Anne Dorval), her ADHD son, Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) and her neighbour – and would-be lover – Kyla (Suzanne Clément), it’s…
The premise of The DUFF is taken from a novel published in 2010, but it feels two decades older than that. DUFF, you see, stands for “designated ugly fat friend”; the kind of jokey attempt at anthropological analysis of high schoolers that went out of fashion around Mean Girls. The film’s titular DUFF is Bianca…
If you’ve been following ccpopculture for a while, you might have noticed that kids’ films are rarely reviewed here. That’s not an accident; I’m simply aware of my strengths and weaknesses as a critic, and writing about children’s entertainment is most definitely a weakness. When it comes to Shaun the Sheep, for instance, I can…
Advanced Style is an affirming document of ageing – not gracefully, but stylishly. The film consists of a series of warm portraits of women in their 60s and over; women who embody their intelligence and artistry in their carefully-orchestrated appearance. As someone utterly ignorant of fashion, I admit to having some degree of trepidation. But…
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