By Jacob Mertens. Stop me if you have heard this story before: a group of teenagers head to a remote cabin in the woods, trading pithy comedic dialogue as a menacing score drifts in and out. The men and women on screen are young, carefree, and about die increasingly gruesome […]
The Grey (2012)
By Jacob Mertens. In the beginning of the poem “Dante’s Inferno,” Dante finds himself in a dark wood, disorientated, grasping for an understanding of his surroundings. Within this grim setting, the poet conjures a primordial chaos, in which Dante’s last impressions of life follow him into the death. In much […]
The Skin I Live In (2011)
By Jacob Mertens. The iconic image of Dr. Frankenstein hunched over a slab of metal, peering into the glassy eyes of his patch-work creation, cannot be easily forgotten when watching Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In. In its place, Antonio Banderas, playing Dr. Robert Ledgard, watches his own mysterious […]
The Descendants (2011)
By Jacob Mertens. At the beginning of Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, George Clooney’s disembodied voice hovers over idyllic imagery of Hawaii, warning the audience that the content of the film will not compliment the scenery. The film soon cuts to a series of shots: clogged traffic, an urban sprawl laid […]
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
By Jacob Mertens. Imagine the dim squalor of a CGI 19th century London. A conspicuous automobile squeezes past a narrow alley, coughing smoke, shambling down the cobbled street amongst pedestrians and horse drawn carriages. Inside the car, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) dons the vaudevillian disguise of a wispy, full-length beard, […]
Kumaré (2011)
By Jacob Mertens. I have always believed in an idea of spirituality. For me, spirituality encompasses an intimate relationship between an individual and his or her surrounding environment. Note that I do not mean the word “environment” in the traditional sense of landscape and atmosphere, but rather as an external […]
Tyrannosaur (2011)
By Jacob Mertens. The title of Paddy Considine’s film Tyrannosaur can’t help but call to mind a vicious rampage of death and destruction. As the audience witnesses the opening moments, they immediately associate the prehistoric creature’s savagery with Peter Mullan’s Joseph, who rages outside of a bar and inadvertently kicks […]
The Future (2011)
By Jacob Mertens. When we are young, we are told that we can do anything with our lives. We feel our path unfold before us, a wide expanse of possibility. However, as we get older that very freedom can become frightening, and we yearn for something calm and simple. In […]
Drive (2011)
By Jacob Mertens. Moving towards an aggressive theater launch, Drive has featured a lot of dizzying, full throttle marketing ploys that suggest Hollywood escapist thrills. The poster is all grit and masculine energy, Rotten Tomatoes has posted an interview claiming that Drive is Ryan Gosling’s “superhero movie”[1], and the trailers […]
Beginners (2010)
By Jacob Mertens. In the opening moments of Mike Mills’ Beginners we see a vase of dead flowers against a dirty kitchen window. The camera is tight, shallow focus, not letting the room breathe. The film cuts to Ewan McGregor’s character Oliver wandering through a near empty house. He dumps […]