Two recent 3D experiences - my first since childhood - have left me with little doubt that 3D is the future of cinema, a future involving an immersive experience along the lines of Aldous Huxley’s feelies.

Robert Zemeckis has embarked upon a long pilgrimage towards the perfection of MoCap, somethin… Continue

Amid a haze of cigarette smoke and uneaten food, the family of Enda Doyle (Malcolm McDowell) gathers in Dublin for his wake. A university librarian, poet, and complicated man, he has left behind a trail of unresolved issues, a dysfunctional family, and a disturbing mystery. “Red Roses and Petrol”, a darkly comic feature film from director Tamar Simon Hoffs, explores the emotional twists and turns of familial relationships.

“Red Roses and Petrol” won first prize at the Avignon Film Festival, was… Continue

It was a pleasure recently to be involved in the French Film Festival UK, which came to my university town for the first time this year.

Although I saw only five of the films that hopefully will feature in this and subsequent blogs specifically at the festival and/or related events, the festival does provide me with an opportunity to blog on those and other French films that recently I have seen at the cinema.

As such,… Continue

I sometimes wonder that I misunderstand how much I am misunderstood and that I am in fact very much understood and am a fool. The same cannot apply to Jane Campion - even if I similarly worry that people misunderstand her. Not in the sense that her films are easily comprehensible (I think it would be difficult to offer up a precise definition of 'what they mean'), but in the sense that the inability of audiences to understand Campion means too often that she is dismissed as a second rater, when… Continue

I wrote a long and personal blog on Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, USA/UK, 2008). Inasmuch as Away We Go is something of a follow-up, so too might this blog be.

If the marriage of Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) fell apart because of a pregnancy, here we see Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) become a stronger c… Continue

I will forever be grateful to Richard Kelly for making Donnie Darko (USA, 2001), which was a mind-spin around parallel universes and the choice of passion over action, and I shall always admire his bravery for making Southland Tales (USA, 2006), which had six-screen split-screens, the Rock acting okay, Stiffler going mad, Buffy dancing at the end of the world, and Justin Timberlake… Continue

There's a book on Frat Pack films that ought to be written, since they are popular and also quite interesting, particularly in the turn taken since the takeover from Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase and the 1980s SNLers by the 1990s iterations, led by Will Ferrell, the Wilsons, Ben Stiller and others, but also including the teen movies that perhaps got kick-started with American Pie (Paul Weitz, USA, 1999). It relates to what I have… Continue

A confession: both of these films made me cry a little. Not uncontrollable tears as happens when I watch The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, USA, 1998) or This Land is Mine (Jean Renoir, USA, 1943). But a few tears abducted themselves nonetheless.

This is almost inadmissible for a film academic (which is supposedly my day job): how could one shed a tear while watching a film by Ro… Continue

As perhaps many know, Michael Haneke's latest won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes. The White Ribbon tells the story of life in a north German town just before the outbreak of the Great War.

As critics have noted, e.g. here, the film takes in typical Haneke themes of guilt and repression, and it is open-ended in that we don't explicitly get to find ou… Continue

After having seen Marc Caro's first solo film, Dante 01 (France, 2008), and having seen Jeunet's solo work, in particular Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain/Amélie (France/Germany, 2001), I wondered in a brief article on the former whether Caro does the darker stuff better than Jeunet, who does the light stuff, a view seemingly seconded… Continue

Nicholas Rombes says that Film Studies may well be in crisis because nowadays everyone already knows everything.

DVD extras make film experts of us all and kids grow up knowing about entropy, parallel universes, virtual reality, space-time, godlessness, and other heavy concepts that we others have had to struggle to get our heads around, because we were not born… Continue

The French have a word to describe depressing (sub)urban areas: glauque.

Glauque might typically be used to describe a small town that has little in the way of variety, little in the way of culture, little nowadays in the way of industry, too. Just a population that strives not to be bored in a place that would destroy the motivation of a tyrant. Only drinking and similar pastimes emerge to counter the boredom - if you can afford the booze. A whole community bored. But it's still… Continue

Again, brief notes and/or comments on:

1. Star Trek (JJ Abrams, USA, 2009)
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Gavin Hood, USA, 2009)
3. GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Stephen Sommers, USA, 2009)
4. District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, USA/New Zealand, 2009)

Star Trek

To boldly go.

I for a long time have wanted to write that the logic of Star Trek's famo… Continue

War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations, states, or political groups, and it has existed ever since the emergence of private property and of classes.

The Day After Peace is not a well-known film and it may never be, but Jeremy Gilley, the writer and director of t… Continue

I am woefully behind on blogging about films I've "recently" seen at the cinema. I'll endeavour to catch up over the next few weeks. But then again, part of the reason why I've not had time to blog has also prevented me from seeing films as much as I would like.

While this year's Cannes Film Festival looked like a humdinger, it is important to remember that we in the styx can also have festivals of cinema every once in a while, and it is a pl… Continue

As usual, notes that could use some editing:

Obviously, I approached this film with no small amount of trepidation. Holocaust revisionism is queasy-making ground for any film, even those that through their use of David Bowie in the soundtrack might seem to eschew any attempt at historical realism. At the same time, this film raises enough issues and topics for discussion that I contemplate putting it on my syllabus the next time I teach ‘Representing the Holocaust’. This is a war film, to be su… Continue

In which I discuss the film Brüno (Larry Charles, US, 2009). Jokes will be referenced.

***

Admittedly, I entered the cinema with low expectations. Brüno had never been one of my favourite characters and the film's alternative title: Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt suggested this might b… Continue

Hello everyone,

You may be interested in this piece of cinephilic news. Just follow the link below.
Apologies for not offering further comment on this (does it need any?)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599190674000.

M

This is not a film review. But it is about some thoughts I had recently and which could probably be incorporated in some odd respect into the forthcoming piece I'll do on the new Star Trek (JJ Abrams, USA, 2009), and it in some other ways refers back to the discussion of tachyons in Watchmen (Zack Snyder, USA, 2009).

In fact, the tachyons might… Continue

1. State of Play (Kevin Macdonald, USA/UK/France, 2009)
2. In the Loop (Armando Ianucci, UK, 2009)
3. Genova (Michael Winterbottom, UK, 2008)

State of Play

An ophidian film, State of Play slithers around in dragging out its labyrinthine plot, such that one is entertained or amused enough.

Plot: ace reporter… Continue