Vicky (Qi Shu), the twenty-something at the center of Hou Hsaio-Hsien’s Millennium Mambo, is stuck in a rut. Long after dropping out of high school, and far from any reasonable, sustainable lifestyle (which would hypothetically include gainful employment, and hypothetically not filled with hard drugs and a controlling, abusive boyfriend), Vicky …
Those of us that have seen Hou’s Three Times probably have a pretty good idea of our preference for each segment. Some fall for the 60’s pop infused romanticism of the first segment, some for the post-modern nihilism of the third segment, virtually no one falling in the second segment camp. It wasn’t until my recent rewatch of the film that I ….
“It’s, like, the worst,” I told a friend after screening Still Alice. “Yes,” he replied. “And yet it stays with you.” My response: “That’s because everyone is afraid. Not because the film is remotely graceful.”
Flight of the Red Balloon… How do I even begin a review for a film that is delicate enough to capture the whimsical naiveté of childhood but mature enough to have its heart broken because that light eventually gives way to the soul dampening shadows of adulthood? I sit here and try to sort out a way to encapsulate a small portion of this film in a passable …
Now that the Taken series has effectively run its course, by taking an interesting premise and forcing it down our throats until we absolutely cannot take anymore, it only seems fitting to…
Paddington is the most British film I’ve seen since The King’s Speech five years ago. I don’t say that disparagingly, either. There is an air of grace and civility throughout and an attitude of ‘if this is what it is, we’ll just deal with it and not make a big deal about it’. That’s certainly at work when no one questions (except one of the children) that …
“When filming, you put what interests you in the centre, not on the margin.” So says a doctor surveying the endoscopy DVD of a deathly serious director whose alleged illness is nought more than one part of a ploy to rehearse in-depth and out of clothes with an attractive actress…
Every year moviegoers are treated to CGI-animated blockbuster fare. It’s easy to dismiss it as just the way animated films are done now. However, there’s brilliance and craftmanship in all forms of animation and when it works, it’s perfect. It just so happens that Tomm Moore’s Song Of The Sea.
Rarely have words the heft of László Krasznahorkai’s: the Hungarian author, whose dystopian tomes manifest in technique and tone the terrifying banality with which we crawl toward death, doesn’t so much tell stories as intone them, the incessant trudge of his behemoth sentences rendering the …
Maloin (Miroslav Krobot) is a switchman at the local train depot, but on this night, he’s more interested in a ship in the adjacent harbor than the train that has come in to his station. What at first looks like an attempt to sneak a briefcase into the country turns into a scuffle and then a murder, and Maloin fishes the case, filled with …