By Tara Judah
Our narrator (Paul Scofield) returns. Pairing himself once more with Robinson, this time commissioned to study (or sleuth) England, the examination of space moves ever so slightly from the psychogeographic to the ideological.
By Tara Judah
Contemporary issues like the global financial crisis and climate change have begged for another round of Robinson’s sleuthing; another essay articulate beyond its years from his companion, our narrator. Something to unpack as the next decade tattoos itself onto the landscape.
But Robinson is defeated.
By Lauren Bliss
Mad Max is a dystopian road movie. Set in the open, dull plains of rural Victoria in southern Australia Max is a member of a special police force “Main Force Patrol” employed to stop out of control feral gangs that have taken the highway hostage. At war against the pursuit of the police, the ferals set their sights on Max’s idyllic wife and baby son. The gang find their revenge and tragedy strikes for Max: his wife and son are killed when run over by the motor-bike gang. His life now sacrificed to the road, mad Max methodically hunts down the destroyers of his family.
By Joe McElhaney
While I do not wish to make a case that Morrissey is a filmmaker on the same level as Warhol, and remaining mindful of major differences between these two artists, Morrissey’s work is nevertheless of some importance and demands to be reckoned with. Few of his films offer possibilities for such a reckoning as Mixed Blood and for reasons very much bound up with the historical moment in which the film was made.
By Lauren Bliss
Wetlands lets the abject speak for the body. A film based on the best-selling autobiography of the same title by Charlotte Roche, it tells the coming-of-age of Helen (Carla Juri) who (in her words) makes her genitals a ‘living experiment’. Believing that the world is too obsessed with hygiene, Helen undertakes a series of grotesque encounters, in public toilets, with random strangers, and with foreign objects (vegetables). Much of the film is comprised of her placing her fingers into her various orifices and tasting whatever comes out. The pure disgust is slicked over with a pop sensibility, this is clearly a film marketed to teenage girls (if Bend It Like Beckham with a major case of gastro-enteritis can possibly provide a new angle into the heavily saturated teen movie market). Helen’s wayward, pubescent journey from childhood into the adult unknown is explored through a commercial aesthetic, the film’s rapid cuts, use of pop music, and heavily scripted one-liners forming a glossy ensemble that ensure cult potential.
By Tara Judah
I am “waiting” for The Death of Place (2013) to begin. I soon realise, however, that the journey, and the film, has already started. Dirk de Bruyn is taking me with him, to interrogate place. Only it isn’t where I think it is.
The place de Bruyn has in mind is an intersection – and a little less where than when. It is the sum total of sensory affect: visual and aural. But it is also preoccupied with time, specifically the past. As each manic frame dances before my eyes, I try to locate at least the death of such a “place”.
By Victor Bruno
A Clint Eastwood film is mainly about love, hate, trust, honesty, justice, violence (and the mean effects it has on humanity), kindness, friendship and work. But these themes, as a good director would do, are not exactly underlined—and when they are, they may be talking about another thing that is hidden under the solid façade the film is trying to make up.
by Claudia Siefen
There is a nice and humourous scene in Cinéma, de notre temps: Eric Rohmer. Preuves à l’appui (1994): Looking for certain compact cassettes in his new office in Paris, Rohmer plucks out some biscuit tins and smiles delightedly to himself that these tins are particularly well suited, after eating the biscuits of course, to storing those cassettes (usually 12 pieces per biscuit tin). And as his interview partner, Jean Douchet, waits for a wordy version of this interesting hypothesis, Rohmer plucks some more good-humored to himself. Nix with biscuit tins thesis!, the teacher of German Literature smiles. The friendly-gangly Rohmer is dressed in a blue shirt; you are right to imagine him as nervous but no less humorous for that.
By Victor Bruno
Through Christopher Columbus – the Enigma we have a character, a mystical presence that appears from time to time. It is a young woman, dressed in the colors of Portugal, red and green, sword in hand. In the final credits she is identified as “The Angel”. To me she is the leading character of the picture.
By José Sarmiento Hinojosa
Allegedly three years on the making, Under the Skin marks the return of English Filmmaker Jonathan Glazer, better know for his musical videos and the film Sexy Beast (200) with a memorable performance by Ben Kingsley.