It’s a rare film that can balance the supernatural and the psychotic. It requires walking the razor’s edge of taut surrealism without toppling into ridiculousness or incoherency. A few films have succeeded – Repulsion, The Innocents, The Shining, Eraserhead. And now, The Babadook. A feature length adaptation of Aussie director Jennifer Kent’s 2005 short Monster,…
Child’s Pose mounts a stinging attack on Romanian bourgeois corruption that avoids didacticism or familiarity by assuming an unconventional perspective. The story is found in the ripples resulting from a car accident that leaves a child dead and the driver potentially facing charges; however, it is not told from the point of view of the…
On the Job is a grim yet likeable Filipino crime thriller, where cops and hitmen are pitted against one another while corrupt politicians pull their strings. It’s a familiar story, and while there are surprises lurking within an impressively dense narrative, there’s no spark of originality to distinguish it from any number of other crime…
As an introduction to a film series that’s still going fourteen years later, X-Men did everything it needed to. Specifically: be an adequate film with an amazing cast. There’s not much to X-Men. It’s more like a feature length television pilot than a complete movie, spicing up its introduction to this world of superpowered mutants…
Beneath the quietly sparkling waters of this lake is something dark and terrible. The lake is the focal point for a cruising spot for gay men. A rumour circulates that a 30-foot predatory fish lurks in the water. This alleged silurus may not exist, but when Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) watches Michel (Christophe Paou) murder his…
Godzilla is an anti-blockbuster, repurposing and reinventing the grammar of big budget disaster films to produce a film that is aesthetically and ideologically compelling, if inconsistently entertaining. A dense evocation of the tragic scale of environmental and nuclear cataclysms, the film’s steadfast refusal to focus on its human characters, instead contemplating global devastation, is hardly…
Spy thrillers are generally sleek and seductive. They have the cold gleam of gunmetal with the occasional sparkle of a diamond-studded Rolex. The spy thriller is a debonair gentleman clad in the perfect black tuxedo. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a different kind of spy movie altogether. Instead of a tuxedo, think an aged duffel…
It goes without saying that Labyrinth is a thoroughly strange kids’ film. For better or worse, they don’t make them like this anymore. It’s hard to imagine any decade but the cocaine-addled ‘80s producing an apparently commercial children’s movie populated by grotesque puppets about which a sinisterly sexual David Bowie cavorts, with only the barest…
It’s hard to talk about A Hijacking without comparing it to Captain Phillips so, fuck it, here we go. The two cover similar content, both narratively – focusing on commercial ships hijacked by pirates – and thematically, with each film drawing implicit links between their events and the damage wrought by modern commercialism/capitalism. Where Captain…
Chef is clearly a personal film for Jon Favreau. This film of food trucks, caviar eggs and molten fillings is as much a tale of artistic resilience as it is the beauty of cooking. It stars Favreau (writer and director besides) as celebrity chef Carl Casper. We watch as he crafts the perfect toasted sandwich,…
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