A new Don’t Let the Moterncast Get You episode on this film. But, it’s extra special this time as we have an exclusive guest: director, writer and producer (he also acts in it) CHARLES ROXBURGH!
He’s such a joy to chat with and the interview is full of amazing anecdotes and brilliant insights.
Listen on The Twin Geeks, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
CW: Racism
So much of Swing Time is just wonderful. It bursts out with a sardonic attitude, a dry wit that lasts the whole film. It's not only the script that feels witty, it is in the choreography too. For the most part, it comes together with such consummate skill and a light touch.
So much of the direction and design is hugely ambitious, but it feels effortless, a movie that glides along like its dancing stars. The narrative framework…
A wonderfully wild Gamera movie full of things that barely fit together, and that so endearingly make no sense at all. It starts out rough, with some crude stereotyping and exoticisation. From this point onwards, though, we are in kaiju-madness mode.
We have the trademark ultraviolence of these child friendly monster movies, as Gamera is sedated and tortured like it's Audition. This then allows the film to introduce a monster that just walks around a city and makes it explode.…
At points, Cabaret really works, but it works even better in description. This is a portrayal of a world about to be lost. The free-wheeling excess is about to be taken away; the party's winding down but nobody knows.
This tension between the Kit Kat Club and the early days of Nazism is a compelling framework. Precious little is done with it, though. There are scenes of power and impact but the ultimate focus is on a somewhat insipid love…
Usually, it's easy to live and let live with family movies; these films are for children and are often blandly bad (or merely okay) in a way that's not really worth dissecting. Frankly, I wish that was the case with Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. A bland and inoffensive experience would be preferable to this: a film that is not only actively bad but that is built around a really disturbing philosophical core.
The initial terribleness…
Grade A trash! This is 80 some minutes of squelchy goodness as poorly dubbed people try to escape zombies in a stately home. It is stuffed with nonsense and a whole lot of wild zooms, and what more could you want?
It also has this soundtrack that goes incredibly hard, often in a way that the visuals have no interest in matching. If you like that several minutes long shot of the outside of an apartment complex in Tenebre, where…
Dario Argento just playing the hits surely isn't the worst mode for him to be in. Yes, Dark Glasses is limited by being a collection of directorial tropes shoved together into an unremarkable narrative, a film that only works because of killer music and Argento trademarks. But, after a string of bad films, Argento just doing what he's done before feels satisfying.
It is good to know that he can still do it. That the blood can still flow, that…
Faded facades and broken windows (so many) dominate the look of this film. The Last Picture Show is just bewitching, an elliptically paced tour through small town misery and failure. In the wider narrative, a lot happens, a lot of major things. However, in the film itself, we see so little of this. Actual incident is reserved for offscreen, often just reported. At best we catch its aftermath.
We even begin in aftermath, our characters have had their big game.…
At this stage, Morbius has become more meme than film and, frankly is not even deserving of that status. One of the worst cinematic crimes (above being actively immoral) is to be bad and boring. This work has the quality level of Catwoman without the entertainment value of pure nonsense cinema.
There is a cold capability to everything here. Though the narrative is uniformly poor, everything fits together like a film. It fits the dry expectations of the definition of…
Relatively close to the start of this five hour drama, we watch an artist run a session. He is exceptionally skilled at balancing objects, and applies this skill as a philosophy, believing people have a natural balance that can be maintained. He also believes in wider kinds of communication, an intuitive communication.
The session, as presented, is quite beautiful. It is hard not to get caught up in the feel of human connection and to welcome the idea of balance.…
Post college malaise evolves into a chronic detachment from reality. This a familiar tale of disaffection, something that cinema loves (especially of lonely men defined by their rejection of reality, often poeticised). But, here, it is done differently.
This lone man is no lone wolf, his thoughts are narrated by a separate person, a female voice actor that (through her presence) creates even more distance. Even our privileged access to this man is a step removed, yet his thoughts also…