I won’t give too much away about The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito): unlike Woody Allen’s films, an Almodóvar doesn’t come along every year, so it’s important to savour them. Psychologists at the University of San Diego recently discovered that people tended to enjoy short stories more when they already knew the [...]
Cold Fish (Japan, 2010) is the story of serial killer, Murata, who owns a tropical fish shop, and the way in which he forces Shamoto, a mild-mannered family man, to become his accomplice. To read a simple description of the events that take place in this film, you might expect something similar to Park Chan-Wook’s [...]
I scarcely remember grinning as much during a film as I did while watching “Let Me In.” Grinning during a horror movie, you ask? Allow me to explain. It was an all-encompassing smile of pleasure, joy, satisfaction, surprise, and a little bit of awe at how carefully and reverently this film was adapted by American [...]
Despite James Cameron’s impassioned attempts to legitimize a 1950s gimmick employed by cinema hucksters to serve cheap thrills to audiences willing shell out a couple of extra bucks, 3D has yet to prove its usefulness beyond a fleeting novelty. It is a dire time for movies. Television, once the mass media marked by pandering to [...]
Nostalgia factors prominently into judgments passed on remakes of beloved films. You may have fond memories of seeing Wes Craven’s 1984 “A Nightmare on Elm Street” as a kid, but chances are if you haven’t seen it since its original theatrical run your perceptions are a little skewed. What many remember as a terrifying experience [...]
“Remake” has become a dirty word thanks to Hollywood’s ever-increasing disregard for creativity and originality. Reactionary studio big-wigs no longer even sniff at projects that aren’t in some way associated with a comic book, toy, or some other established film property. The result has been an ocean of refuse amassed through the hiring of cheap [...]
“There’s nothing wrong with mustaches, except in the summertime when they get in the way of eatin’ ice cream cones.” Imagine that phrase uttered by a middle-aged, mustached, cowboy serial killer standing ominously behind the DJ table of a techno club just moments before he opens fire on a warehouse full of innocent young ravers. [...]
Biting social commentary, breathtaking imagery, an innovative take on centuries-old mythology and a respectable entry into the painfully saturated vampire genre. Well, 1½ out of 4 ain’t bad. “Daybreakers,” the second featured film (2003′s “Undead” being the first) from the twin brothers from Down Under, Michael and Peter Spierig, certainly aspires to turn the vast [...]
Suspicion of intellectualism and academia have been the unfortunate byproducts of the rise of the big dumb Hollywood movie. Film critics, once a respected and authoritative source of reasoned artistic analysis, have come to be looked upon by the movie-going masses as archaic contrarians stuck in a time when color film was a novelty and [...]
Thump… Creeeak….. THUMP! Fear. The invaluable evolutionary tool that has enabled our survival of predation from prehistoric menaces like the saber-toothed tiger and aided our scattered tribes into eventual planet domination and thriving globalization has become all but useless. Of course, true danger still exists, but how many times a day, or even in a [...]
Loco: London’s 1st Comedy Film Festival
Orlando: Does Sex Matter?
A soothing demise: Lars von Trier’s ‘Melancholia’ considered
The Power of Limits in The Five Obstructions
Surviving ‘Surviving Life’
‘The Other’ at The 2nd London Iranian Film Festival
‘Leaving’: Made in Prague
A Step Forward: New African Film in ParisAdapting to The Skin I Live In: The Antidote to Horror
Chicken with Plums: Better on Paper
