What we find scary will vary enormously. For some it’s the supernatural, for others the psychological. We may be revolted by physical suffering or horrified by social oppression. The Owners is a film that capitalizes on multiple registers of fear to create an unsettling space, both within the framework of the film and more widely,…
“Certain persons in the world exist, not as personalities in themselves, but as spots or specks on the personalities of others” — N. V. Gogol, “Dead Souls” A Gentle Creature is as Russian a creature can ever be. It is the kind of character-driven story where the protagonist is bereft of all possible character —…
Gorgeous colors and graceful poetic images mark The Red Turtle (La tortue rouge), a wordless 80-minute animated film co-produced by the famed Japanese Studio Ghibli and Dutch animator Michael Dudok de Wit. Made in France, the dialogue-free film was produced by Takahata Isao and co-written by French director Pascale Ferran whose 2014 film “Bird People”…
It’s pitch dark. We see nothing. Only hear hollow voices as routine questions are asked and forms are filled. No context whatsoever. Yet we slowly and silently find ourselves rooting for the individual answering the increasingly absurd questionnaire. That’s when we find ourselves rooted in the character that will be leading the whole film. That’s…
As the ragged and haggard anti-hero in Jean-François Richet’s rollicking grind-house showcase Blood Father, lead character John Link is a lost wrecking ball in search of raging redemption despite whatever erratic and intrinsic demons that beleaguered his unstable psyche. Well, this description can also be applied to the relentlessly problematic performer playing this graying, leather-skinned…
In 1933, Jimmy Gralton (Barry Ward, “Blood Cells”) became the only Irish citizen ever to have been deported from Ireland when he was exiled to America without a trial. His crime seems to be that he was a Communist who incurred the ire of the Catholic Church and the landlords by daring to establish a…
The modern explosion of stereoscopic 3D cinema has been many things in many different filmmakers’ hands, but it’s never quite been whatever it is that French New Wave pioneer and long-time experimenter Jean-Luc Godard has done with it. Whereas before the technology ranged from irrelevant to immersive, Godard has now brought it to a place…
