Letterboxd — Your life in film

As I stumbled out of the cinema, wandering dizzily through the shopping centre, I couldn't quite fathom whether I'd liked Man of Steel. Isn't that a strange thing, to not be sure whether you've enjoyed something? I guess, really, it means I didn't. Maybe the confusion comes because it's such a big, loud, bombastic blockbuster, doing all the big, loud, bombastic blockbuster stuff without actually providing any of the entertainment you'd expect of a big, loud, bombastic blockbuster. I think…

Review from Next Projection

After many years of hardy service, grandfather’s axe had to have its worn blade replaced, its shiny new counterpart returning the tool to its original vitality and power. Years later still, the weathered handle, splintered and frayed from usage, was exchanged for a sturdy new shaft. Each of its parts replaced, does what we now call “grandfather’s axe” have any legitimate claim to that title? Does that object still exist despite, superficially at least, no longer…

Review from Next Projection

“All this filming isn’t healthy,” warned Mrs. Stephens in Peeping Tom, wary of the eponymous antihero’s fascination with the filmed image and its voyeuristic capabilities. She, of course, was a blind woman, herself unable to experience the disconcerting effect of the screen’s relation to the real world. But cinema is more than mere image, and since the advent of sound in 1927 what we hear has been every bit as instrumental to movies’ effect as what…

Review from Next Projection

Eyebrows inevitably arch upward in surprise as Fred Jaggi, seasoned Swiss beekeeper, happily clambers his rickety ladder and—peacefully puffing on the cigar dangling casually from his lip—hacks a hive from the tree branch above, never so much as flinching as dozens of bees land right on his bare skin. What curious creatures we humans are, commandeering nature as though it were ours to control. It is far beyond it, Markus Imhoof’s enlightening documentary determinedly points out…

Review from Next Projection

Any number of storytelling or thematic intentions can facilitate the opening of a movie in media res—in the middle of things. Whether for the purpose of tension or mystery, audience disorientation or narrative obfuscation, the structural technique has been put to use in a remarkable range of interesting new ways across the course of cinema history. Vehicle 19, together with its casting of Paul Walker as an American who arrives in Johannesburg and finds himself caught…

Review from Next Projection

The critical difference between marketing and art, claims Syrup at a crucial narrative juncture, is the latter’s evaluation of idea above commercial value—if any—rather than vice-versa, as in the former. It’s a cute little line to have a character espouse, though one that inevitably draws attention to the movie’s own precarious standing on the art-commerce line: what is this film, and what does it want of us? Directed by Aram Rappaport—a filmmaker with a single prior…

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

The singular control of Shane Carruth contributes enormously to the peculiarity of vision which characterises his sophomore feature Upstream Color, a film that sees the unbridled ambition of his 2004 debut Primer and raises it a masterful execution. Rightly compared to Malick, it’s perhaps Charlie Kaufman and Synecdoche, New York with which Carruth and his film feel most of a piece, each man struggling to reconcile the baffling absurdity of existence…

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

There’s an admirable deftness of tone to Bouli Lanners’ The Giants that allows the coming-of-age tale to handily sidestep the many drawbacks of its familiar story structure. Capably moving from dark realism to light comedy, Lanners and his terrific young cast tell an engaging story of youthful reverie and the imposing shadow of adulthood, focusing on all-but-abandoned brothers Seth and Zak, and their impromptu decision to rent out their grandfather’s home…

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

It’s always kind of a film to conveniently summate itself for the sake of critics; The Big Bad has the sense to conclude with the utterance “oh crap”, a fitting farewell to 78 minutes of just that. Star Jessi Gotta, who also wrote and produced the film, cannot act, and her inability to make convincing her own abysmal material makes itself evident within the film’s very first moments. It’s a tragically…

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

Winner of an impressive six trophies at the 2012 Goya Awards, Spain’s answer to the Oscars, No Rest for the Wicked is already on course for the inevitable Hollywood remake, purportedly to star Sylvester Stallone. In a way, it’s a fitting casting choice; the protagonist of the original, an aloof cop whose rage-induced triple homicide kicks off the story, might find appropriate (lack of) expression in Sly’s inimitable visage. He, played…

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

Relatively lean by Bollywood standards at just 101 minutes, Mere Dad Ki Maruti offers an enjoyably ludicrous comic adventure as the reliably unreliable younger brother of a bride-to-be loses her wedding gift car after taking it out to impress a girl. Saqib Saleem is a fine lead for the film, but it’s Prabal Panjabi as his perpetually put-upon best friend who steals the show, his reactionary presence the one consistent delight…

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

His first self-penned film since 2004’s Mysterious Skin, which saw him break through to a far larger audience than before, Gregg Araki’s Kaboom seems more the work of a debut screenwriter than a seasoned one, its messy generic mishmash and woefully indulgent, irritating characters rendering it a film with none of the grace or depth of that earlier offering. Well enough cast, with a likeable lead in Thomas Dekker, it’s the…