How did they ever make a movie of Lolita? That was not only the marketing campaign in 1962 leading up to the release of Stanley Kubrick’s film but a genuinely good question. Director Stanley Kubrick made a decision to film the controversial 1958 Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita, a novel about a European intellectual in his late …
Stanley Kubrick had a reputation for making what was said to be cold, distant films. He kept everyone at arm’s length while he told stories that were predominantly about the dehumanization of society and under most circumstances generally horrible people. This assertion seems dismissive and is natural if the viewer …
For the last 19 years, animation has been held to the Pixar standard, which is not an easy bar to hit, even for Pixar on occasion. Some other studios produce films up to that standard, like DreamWorks, but often they fall flat or just hit a mildly entertaining note. The Book of Life does manage to make it above mildly entertaining …
Baz Luhrman’s second film in his red curtain trilogy, by far his best, in my opinion (not according to Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB though), and one of the best film soundtracks ever created. Luhrman sought three different themes for each film, dance, language, and song. What he created in Romeo & Juliet was a hyper- …
Sometimes life hits you with a bunch of complicated shit when all you really want to do is spin a Neil Young record and roll another number. Inherent Vice is a film about that feeling. It’s about other things, too: capitalism, counterculture, California. It’s also about how much Paul Thomas Anderson, the film’s director …
When Clueless begins, Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) is shallow, self-centered, and vacuous. The most popular girl in her incredibly rich, Beverly Hills high school, Cher dishes out pseudo-spiritual guidance like Confucius raised exclusively on Cosmo, explaining her own philosophy in deliciously facile bon mots that she …
When Jeremy (Sebastian Armesto) brings his British fiancée Jennifer (Olivia Grant) along on a European trip to search for the extended family of his best friend William (Gethin Anthony), he surely didn’t expect it to trigger fits of jealousy and resentment in William. “She sucks,” William says about Jennifer, “And not in a good …
Jarring fragments from a new realm of creative possibilities flood the screen with mid 1990s CRT technological aesthetics. Motion and light existing solely in a fabricated vacuum circumnavigates the world at lightning speeds as material objects have been given a new method of intercommunication that requires waning levels of …
The UK trailer for mumblecore director Lynn Shelton’s latest film Laggies (under the international title Say When) is now online. An official…
Writer/director Hong Khaou’s debut film Lilting examines the painful aftermath of a Chinese Cambodian boy’s death. Kai came to London from China because his mother wanted to give him a better, freer life. Kai is a soft, kind boy who’s lightly charming, fairly fashionable, and somewhat beautiful looking. He’s fairly ordinary, but …