Tag: drama
In Eye in the Sky we say goodbye to Alan Rickman
Eye in the Sky is the type of film that lends itself to descriptors like “timely” and “prescient”.
It may not be the first drama to tackle the spectre of drone warfare – Ethan Hawke-starrer A Good Kill did so through the lens of a character study – but it is certainly has the weightiest cast.…
Ponderous and imponderable, Knight of Cups is, like its protagonist, easily led
Knight of Cups is a film you could drown in – a vast thematic ocean lapping against the distant shore of some grand, obscure vision. And I don’t have any f**king trunks.
As a director-philosopher (or should that be philosopher-director?),…
Eye in the Sky is a timely look at drone warfare (RIP, Alan Rickman)
Eye in the Sky is the type of film that lends itself to descriptors like “timely” and “prescient”.
It may not be the first drama to tackle the specter of drone warfare – Ethan Hawke-starrer A Good Kill did so through the lens of a character study – but it is certainly has the weightiest cast.…
Hail, Caesar! loses itself on the Hollywood backlot
Everyone loves a good movie about the movies.
Hollywood’s fetish for self-mythologizing1 lends itself to tales of stardom2 and scathing satire3 alike, but few films imbue Tinseltown with the same glow or seeming reverence as the Coen Brothers’ latest.
Hail, Caesar!
Truth misses the point somewhat
“Are you now or have you ever been a liberal?”
This line that has appeared in two films this London Film Festival — the first being Trumbo, a biopic of the avowed leftie screenwriter who helped to bring down the blacklist.…
Experimenter is a smart film about a smart guy
Writer-director Michael Almereyda enter public consciousness back in 2000 with his moody, ultramodern take on Hamlet — which featured Ethan Hawke as a suitably disaffected crown prince, complete with woolly Peruvian hat.
If something there got lost amidst the static and the skyscrapers, then his latest film, Experimenter — about social psychologist Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard), particularly his famed experiment into obedience to authority — is certainly more to the point.…
Orthodox is too by-the-book to make much of an impact
Is there any sport so cinematic as boxing?
Its grace and brutality lend themselves to celluloid, and especially the breed of tormented protagonist that tends to accompany them. Far from the glossy Hollywood melodramas that have defined the genre in recent years, the astutely named Orthodox counterpoints the sweet science with a new subject: faith.…
Trumbo is a barnstorming triumph of cinematic liberalism
From Sunset Boulevard to Argo, Hollywood has always been in the business of self-mythologizing.
It’s not often, though, that the industry takes its licks for the mistakes it’s made along the way.
Writ large among them is, of course, the blacklist, which saw scores of talented, Left-leaning film-makers left out in the cold as the paranoia surrounding Communism reached fever pitch.…
Room is a minor masterpiece in microcosm with two miraculous performances
We take a lot for granted out in the world.
It’s full of space and objects, enough so that we can overlook just how much “thingness” there is to our everyday existence. Imagine a world then of only ten feet by ten feet, a world where every item has a sense of permanency to it: Bed, Wardrobe, Skylight.…