“These are the rooms we're not supposed to go in. But let's go anyways!”
The Florida Project is a triumph. That is probably a predictable thing to say but Sean Baker’s slice of life tragedy centring around the characters at the Magic Kingdom motel is nothing short of a masterpiece. The cast are spectacular, including some of the best child actors I have ever seen, the script is delightful and the filmmaking strikes and effortless balance between brutally realistic and…
“Life finds a way.”
As I was lying on my couch tonight enjoying a rewatch of the 1985 classic Doctor Who serial Revelation of the Daleks (to be reviewed some day soon), my roommate returned home from a trip to the cinema. I asked him what he saw and his answer was the latest, Universal blockbuster; Jurassic World: Dominion.
I asked him if he enjoyed the picture at all.
He did not.
However, my ears pricked immediately at the revelation…
“Do you want to dance?”
“Go to hell.”
God, this was bleak. Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is one of the most harrowing watches I have ever had. Telling the story of two desperate characters and their attempt to win a dance marathon in Depression-era America, the film is relentlessly brutal and scathingly clever.
This is one of the best realised, however on the nose, allegories I have seen in a film and almost certainly one of the…
“People put you down enough, you start to believe it.”
This is really a tale as old as time. J. F. Lawton and Garry Marshall’s contemporary retelling of My Fair Lady (which is, in turn, a retelling of the play Pygmalion) is very charming, very sweet and delightfully entertaining. Very tastefully navigating themes of classism and prejudice, it should be no surprise to anybody that Pretty Woman was a runaway success. While it never really treads any new ground or offers…
“It’s very hard to get your heart and head together in life. In my case, they’re not even friendly.”
I think that the most definitive parameter by which to judge Woody Allen films is how long the picture feels to watch. In the case of Crimes and Misdemeanours, it certainly feels like a longer viewing. Following in the more dramatic, existential footsteps of Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanours tells the story of two men from very different worlds…
“When you get up in the morning, how do you decide what shade of black to wear?”
The debut, feature-length effort from Danny Boyle proved immediately that he would be a master at his chosen craft. Not just filmmaking but, more specifically, telling stories about the miserable, bleak and addled lives of every day people in Britain after being entangled in horrific situations. Shallow Grave is a compelling and witty examination of three extreme personalities wading through trauma in the…
i hate everything about this. literally everything.
“Everybody thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor but they couldn't possibly all have good taste.”
How do you know you’ve met the right person? How do you know it’s ever going to work? Aren’t relationships all kind of banal and futile anyway? Like every single person in their twenties, these are the kind of thoughts I find myself ruminating on a hell of a lot. So much so, for that matter, that I actually spent the…
"Your evil is my good. I am the Sutekh the Destroyer. Where I tread I leave nothing but dust and darkness. I find that good."
There are some things, though not many, that the Doctor Who fandom seems to universally agree on. Everybody seems to agree that the Weeping Angels are a great villain. Everybody seems onboard with the notion that The Caves of Androzani is one of the best stories of all time. Everybody seems to agree that the…
“Your wife, mate, your wife is one of the great bourgeois monsters of our time!”
In 2022, it would probably be depressing for many to see just how relevant Don’s Party is. Adapted by David Williamson from his play of the same name, the story of a colourful group of Australian hypocrites getting pissed on election night, awaiting the death of the conservative government, rings very poignant today. What works so well about this story, primarily, are the characters. Each…