dir. Christopher Nolan
USA, 2010
Not as mind-boggling as reviewers would have you believe. Still interesting, and depending on your viewpoint, philosophically brave/exciting - for a Hollywood film. Indie actors - Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page - steal the show from a somewhat subdued Leonardo di Caprio, although he's a hugely interesting actor - an important one of his generation, certainly, along with Matt Damon.
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Rewatch: Beau Travail
dir. Claire Denis
France, 1999
Part of Claire Denis season at GFT. Still wonderful. One of the best films of the 90s, if not ever.
France, 1999
Part of Claire Denis season at GFT. Still wonderful. One of the best films of the 90s, if not ever.
White Material
dir. Claire Denis
France, 2009
Interesting, if, in the end, a little disappointing. A truly irritating, morally dubious central character, played well by Isabel Huppert, but a strange atmosphere. Potentially iffy politics too, with the vast majority of speaking parts those of white parts/actors, with the many black actors and parts generally silent. If they're the real subjects of the film, why not focus on them, rather than the plantation owner who's a throwback to colonial times?
France, 2009
Interesting, if, in the end, a little disappointing. A truly irritating, morally dubious central character, played well by Isabel Huppert, but a strange atmosphere. Potentially iffy politics too, with the vast majority of speaking parts those of white parts/actors, with the many black actors and parts generally silent. If they're the real subjects of the film, why not focus on them, rather than the plantation owner who's a throwback to colonial times?
Saturday, 3 April 2010
Samson and Delilah
dir. Warwick Thornton
Australia, 2009
Utterly surprising, wonderful film about Aboriginal teens in the middle of Australia in love and running away to the nearest city. They hardly talk to each other, communicating in looks.
Amazingly, it manages to make the "white man's world", as one hobo describes it, look utterly alien. There's a scene where the girl (who is never named, but we assume she's called Delilah) watches to blonde-haired, blue-eyed teen schoolgirls sitting on a park bench talking on their mobile phones, and Thornton manages to make these two normal girls look so strange, so odd, it's unbelievable - the film is so entirely through and from the perspective of S & D that everything that isn't their world seems part of another planet altogether.
She's a total hero too, especially for the last third of the film where in a leg brace (after getting run over) she carries logs for firewood, kills and cooks dinner, makes a shack into a home, starts up the pump for the water, all whilst he lolls around in gas-fume-enduced oblivion (by this point he is going through cold turkey). She has such a wonderfully understated expressive face that she can communicate love, slight irritance and amusement all at once.
Australia, 2009
Utterly surprising, wonderful film about Aboriginal teens in the middle of Australia in love and running away to the nearest city. They hardly talk to each other, communicating in looks.
Amazingly, it manages to make the "white man's world", as one hobo describes it, look utterly alien. There's a scene where the girl (who is never named, but we assume she's called Delilah) watches to blonde-haired, blue-eyed teen schoolgirls sitting on a park bench talking on their mobile phones, and Thornton manages to make these two normal girls look so strange, so odd, it's unbelievable - the film is so entirely through and from the perspective of S & D that everything that isn't their world seems part of another planet altogether.
She's a total hero too, especially for the last third of the film where in a leg brace (after getting run over) she carries logs for firewood, kills and cooks dinner, makes a shack into a home, starts up the pump for the water, all whilst he lolls around in gas-fume-enduced oblivion (by this point he is going through cold turkey). She has such a wonderfully understated expressive face that she can communicate love, slight irritance and amusement all at once.
Walk The Line
dir. James Mangold
USA, 2005
Flicking channels found it on C4. Very good, like everyone's said, held together by great performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon.
USA, 2005
Flicking channels found it on C4. Very good, like everyone's said, held together by great performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
