The definition of “epic” is a work of narrative art in an elevated style that recounts the deeds of a legendary or historical hero. Such a hero tends to be legendary because of the backdrop, their individual acts taking place within a context that shapes or reshapes the world. Therefore, a truly epic realization of…
With a CRACK! that delivers aural and narrative impact, Red Sparrow lays out its cards early on. This CRACK! occurs during a ballet and highlights a key tension of such a performance — any mistake can be disastrous. In this case, the incident involving the CRACK! does prove devastating and foreshadows the ruin to come….
William Shakespeare wrote (Sonnet 116), “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.” Though Shakespeare would not admit impediments to the marriage of true minds, Kate and Geoff Mercer in Andrew…
On account of its dense and lengthy disposition, adapting Patrick White’s acclaimed novel “The Eye of the Storm” for the screen was never going to be easy. In the hands of Melburnian filmmaker Fred Schepisi, though, the adaptation has given rise to an engrossing acting master-class of a drama. Set in Sydney sometime during the…
The Mill and the Cross is a movie inside of a painting, specifically a 1564 painting titled “The Way to Calvary” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Pieter Bruegel (Rutger Hauer) is the main character in the film which takes turns following him as he decides how his painting will take shape and who will be…
The title of Lars von Trier’s latest film refers to a rogue planet, significantly dwarfing our Earth and heading for it on an inevitable collision course. von Trier sets the countdown to extinction among a wealthy family holed up in a storybook castle, inhabited largely by two sisters, one a force of depressive nature and…
If you’ve seen “Antichrist” or “Dogville,” you know Lars von Trier is an artistic director who does not shy away from deep, dark, bleak, and generally very unsettling subject matter. The trailer for his latest, Melancholia, doesn’t say either way, but you can get a sense of what may come: Due to a freak planetary…
