By Robert Kenneth Dator. The Tension Between Being and Nothingness Jean Paul Sartre wouldn’t mind my purloining Being and Nothingness, as Things I Don’t Understand is very much an existentialist treatise, conscious or otherwise. From the ontological notion of absurdity—that is to say that life is absurd because it has […]
The Holistic (2013)
By Robert Kenneth Dator. “I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of an afterlife.” The Holistic is a film short that stays long in one’s memory. I cannot count how many films I’ve seen devoted to life-after-death, but I can’t recall a single one that presented the idea that some […]
The Lords of Salem
By Cleaver Patterson. Having watched The Lords of Salem (2012) one really has to ask what the point behind such a film is? That’s not to say that every movie has to have some deeper meaning. Indeed some films, particularly horror, are often more entertaining if taken at face value […]
Dead Again: The Evil Dead Legacy
By Cleaver Patterson. They say if something’s not broken, don’t fix it – advice Sam Rami and Bruce Campbell might have been wise to pay more heed to. This week sees both the rerelease on Blu-ray of Evil Dead II (1987), the sequel to their cult schlocker The Evil Dead […]
Spring Breakers (2013): A SXSW Review
By Jacob Mertens. As far as rallying cries go, I suppose you can do worse than “spring break forever.” Even so, as Spring Breakers’ enigmatic Alien (James Franco) intones the words over and over, each syllable clawing through the speakers in the character’s arresting drawl, the sentiment becomes more of […]
Looking Backwards: Oblivion
By Cleaver Patterson. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes chapter 1, verse 9, describes succinctly the new Tom Cruise blockbuster. Oblivion (2013), the sci-fi extravaganza written, directed and produced by Joseph Kosinski and based […]
Spying the Noir: Fritz Lang’s Ministry of Fear
By Matthew Sorrento. By 1959, when making cinema history via Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock was weary of male victims on the run. In North by Northwest, he delivered what screenwriter Ernest Lehman described as “the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures.” Essentially, it was the last great work by the […]
The Man Who Should be Legend (Onscreen): Brian Helgeland’s 42
By Matthew Sorrento. I can understand the resistance to film the story of Jackie Robinson since the man himself played the role in 1950. Robinson is a legend so grand that actors would struggle to approach the man behind the story. Onscreen, should Jackie be destined for greatness? Or just […]
I’m So Excited (Los amantes pasajeros, 2013)
By Gaël Schmidt-Cléach. In the opening scene of Pedro Almodóvar’s I’m So Excited, two ground crew members, played by Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz, get distracted while prepping a plane for take-off, triggering the events of the movie before disappearing, not to be seen again. The scene is reminiscent of […]
IFFR 2013: The Passion of the Everyman in Boy Eating the Bird’s Food (2012)
By Martin Kudláč. The descendants of Plato and Aristotle have done it again. Despite the mass of negative press focussed on the country’s ongoing financial crisis, Greek filmmakers have succeeded in attracting a good deal of attention. This rising modern generation of auteurs has proven to have all the necessary […]