Cannes Journal: ‘Climax’
From the shock of ‘Irreversible’ to the fever dream of ‘Enter the Void’ or the sordid 3D infantilism of ‘Love’, Gaspar Noë’s provocative works shock and bemuse with equal measure, his adol...
From the shock of ‘Irreversible’ to the fever dream of ‘Enter the Void’ or the sordid 3D infantilism of ‘Love’, Gaspar Noë’s provocative works shock and bemuse with equal measure, his adol...
What can be said about one of the most wondrous films ever made? How about that one hated it the first time he saw it? Screened on VHS on a 20″ Trinitron, the only thing I knew about ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ was t...
There’s only so much you can do about a survival story in the snow. How many times can bad things happen and still be interesting and believable? What sets ‘Arctic’ apart is its good use of physical space, some a...
With its stark black-and-white photography, impeccably composed and framed in Academy Ratio, the art house aesthetic of Pawel Pawlikowski’s ‘Cold War’ comes fully on display in the first moments of the work. Yet ...
Asghar Farhadi, the celebrated director behind award-winning films like ‘A Separation’ and ‘The Salesman’, has been a fixture on the festival circuit, for some the pinnacle of contemporary Iranian cinema. F...
There’s something in the water, and it seems to be in the form of a rodent infestation. Recently, there’s been a minor plague of sophisticated, intelligent documentaries that look at rat-like creatures and how they sha...
It’s been a long road for Paul Schrader to get to ‘First Reformed’, a work that even he admits may not be his last but may well serve as a culmination of his craft. From his earliest days as a seminarian through ...
Some Japanese horror movies are achingly sincere and slow-burn to the point of tedium. ‘Vampire Clay’ is absolutely not one of those movies. Directed by makeup and effects artist Sôichi Umezawa, the film is an absolute...
There’s a benefit to simplicity in genre movies. Set up a single situation tense enough to stretch out for 90 minutes and you’ve not only got a genre yarn easy to produce on a minuscule budget, but something with an ea...
Sweet and so strange it had to be true, ‘Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool’ gives the celebrities-playing-celebrities bio subgenre a good name. It helps that this isn’t a predictable rise and fall yarn. It&...
Here’s a good idea for a sicko horror comedy: The world is suddenly stricken by a plague that forces parents to kill their children. The rest kind of fills in itself, in a good way. It’s the sort of thing that has to b...
‘Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond – With a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton’ is a portrait of two of the more intriguing comedy minds of the late 20th Century. Their last names are Carrey ...