“I wanna be just like a melody, just like a simple sound, like in harmony” — Glide from “All About Lily Chou-Chou” Projections of the future in cinema have mainly foreseen a world where war, disease, and pervasive alienation are the norm. Korean-born writer/director Kogonada’s vision of the future, however, is not a dystopian world…
It begins with rapid titles. “WB,” “DC,” The Batman, all flash up on screen quickly, before an opening point-of-view shot through binoculars takes in a well-dressed man in an opulent mansion. Watching, observing, planning and judging, this extended shot is unsettling in its voyeurism, especially as the viewer shares the perspective of this watcher, who…
“By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes” — Macbeth Act 4, Scene 1 Pronouncements telling us that fair is foul, good is bad, and dark is light are what you might expect to hear from the propaganda machine of an ambitious politician or a news organization seeking to sow confusion. In…
“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly” — Henri Bergson Some people experience maturity at an early age when they are thrust by circumstances into a position of responsibility before they are ready. Some do not experience it until their twenties, thirties, or…
If your children suggest that you operate within “your zone of resiliency,” you might want to look into what soap opera they’ve been watching, or whether they have gotten their hands on a convoluted movie script, the sort readily available in Mike Mills (“20th Century Women”) C’mon C’mon, a film inspired by Mills’ relationship with…
“And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime. Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning” — Wilfred Owen, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” The lives of World War I English poets Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden (“Dunkirk”) and Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson, “Making Noise Quietly”)…
London in the swinging 60s. A time of glamour. A place of dreams. An era of magic, cruelty and abuse. Wait, what? That’s right, Edgar Wright’s (the Cornetto Trilogy, “Baby Driver”) latest film, Last Night in Soho, largely eschews the lighthearted tone of his previous work, delivering a tale that is dark, gruesome and visceral,…
