Tag: Three star
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Stockholm, My Love Review – Walking simulacrum
In a way the least interesting thing about Stockholm, My Love is the film itself. As one of Mark Cousins’ essay pieces it has a soft easygoing gentility to it. You sorta wanna watch it lying down, or maybe in a relaxation tank just somewhere where you don’t have to worry about keeping your neck…
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The Other Side of Hope Review: Something being said
Damn, why is it that all the Nordic movies are the most determinedly stylish? If it ain’t Juho Kuosmanen buying up Europe’s entire stock of 16mm b/w film for The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki or Roy Andersson playing with the nature and texture of digital filmmaking in his Living Trilogy then…
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Frantz: Love after the war
There’s something about wartime romance movies. Usually in this country it’s the Second World War. After some searching i found the last most recent one, the insipid 2004 joint Suite Française. A film, as they always are about the love affair between a French woman and this dashing Nazi officer. At least Ilsa, She Wolf…
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Alien: Covenant: A clumsy remix
Did you enjoy Alien? You know how Aliens took the approach of completely recontexualising the familiar iconography through the perspective of a different genre lens? What originally was a tension horror joint reinterpreted as military action, the very image of the xenomorph itself taking a completely different meaning through its multiplication. Difference of ten years…
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Mindhorn: These fair Isles
It’s weird seeing the title cards in independent movies that were never supposed to be on the big screen. At the opening of Mindhorn Isle of Man Film’s logo looks like a shitty jpeg, stretched out awkwardly to fill the screen. There’s been some talk, a surprising amount of films shoot on the Isle but…
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Letters From Baghdad: Lady Lawrence
There’s this amazing bit in the story of Gertrude Bell when, on one of her Middle Eastern expeditions she runs into a young man working as an apprentice at an archaeological site. And she tells him, ‘Hey dude, I know you’re just starting out, but you’re digging all shitty. We’re trying to preserve history here,…
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Their Finest: Its own propaganda
Chris Nolan’s Dunkirk is coming out later this year. I hope it’s good. The film websites are already full of the news, Director of Photography Hoyte Van Hoytema, manhandling the IMAX camera to capture war’s viscera. The trailer for it actually was played before my screening. Maybe we’ll someday get a film about its production…
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Fast & Furious 8: I don’t care what you Americans call it.
It’s called Fast & Furious 8 here in the UK. Seems to be Fate of the Furious in other markets. Misleading; there don’t seem much fateful or furious about this joint. We open in Cuba, I guess the lifting of the embargo has made it the new hot place for films to visit. It is…
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Beauty and the Beast: Classic remake, or remade classic?
This gotta be the shortest delay for a Disney live action remake right? I mean we had Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty by any other name) followed by Branagh’s Cinderella, then Favreau’s The Jungle Book and David Lowery’s Pete’s Dragon; but Pete’s Dragon came out in ’77 and never really hung about in the public consciousness. Beauty…
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Kong: Skull Island – A better Sahara
Did you ever watch Sahara? I don’t think many people did, it’s not that good. I think it’s one of the contenders for the title of the biggest Hollywood flop. It’s the bizarre, sloppy, racist attempt to turn Matthew McConaughey into the action star he never was. Part of the joy of the thing is…
A Grand Quiet 