As many have observed, it is immediately obvious that this film was inspired by the work of Terence Malick. The quiet, still shots, the way it highlights the majesty of the nature, even its understated story about the life of an ordinary man are all reminiscent of the grandmaster. That’s admirable and this is fine work. Even so, it never manages to reach the sublime heights that Malick achieved at his best. The dialogue is flat at times and the third-person narration does too much work instead of trusting in the power of images alone to convey what is needed. This appears to only be director Clint Bentley’s second feature film so he’s someone worth watching out for.
Everyone has been hyping this one up so much since its release and this once it’s absolutely justified. Not only is it far and away the best action movie of the year, it crosses genres and is as much a musical as a horror film. It looks and sounds fantastic, fearlessly imaginative while being grounded in the Jim Crow-era South and is perfectly paced. There’s actually not that much action, but when it arrives, it’s explosive and definitive. It’s what a blockbuster Hollywood movie should be and I only regret not catching it in the cinemas earlier.
I became a fan of the new style stealth-focus RTS games due to Shadow Tactics but unfortunately the developer Minimi Games is no more. I’ll probably get around to playing their last pirate-themed game at some point but in the meantime here’s a World War 2-themed game in the same vein by a different developer. This one is much more combat focused and features a base management component in between missions.
Shih-Ching Tsou is a long-time collaborator of Sean Baker and now she finally gets her own feature film, one that is set in Taiwan. Shot on an iPhone and featuring highly saturated colors, it’s stylistically similar to Baker’s work and is about the lives of a downtrodden family in Taipei. It’s fascinating to watch a Taiwanese framed in a more American style and it’s cathartic to watch the family crash headlong against traditional Chinese mores. But on the whole it’s a fairly conventional film that doesn’t break any new ground.
Agnès Varda’s work never stops astounding me and this very early and deceptively simple film is a case in point. It’s shot in cheerily bright colors, reminiscent of the work of her husband Jacques Demy, and presents a postcard perfect picture of a blissfully married life. What’s brilliant about this is that Varda plays it so straight that you could plausibly take it at face value and never see anything wrong in it at all. But it would be uncharacteristic of her make something like that so seen from a different perspective, we can only conclude that it is a horror film.
I’ve had this novel on my list of books that I want to read for so long that I’d given up all hope of finding it. Many writers and critics loved it when it was published but it seemingly never found commercial success, few copies were printed and no ebook version was made. Now nearly 30 years later, it has finally been made available in electronic form. Naturally I’m among the first in line for it and like everyone else I am awed by how ahead of its time it was as a masterpiece. Even so, I can also see why it might have struggle to find success back then. Almost all of its grand revelations are from interviews by the protagonist, so it’s very much a case of telling instead of showing. This isn’t a good science-fiction novel in the conventionally marketable sense but it is breathtakingly original and unique.
Frankenstein was apparently Guillermo del Toro’s dream project for years and the filmmaker has certainly earned enough credit to be worth paying attention to no matter what he wants to make. I actually have read the book this time but accept that adaptations have their own take on the source material. In this instance, del Toro has chosen to cast the monster purely as the wronged party which seems a little obvious. He does know exactly where he wants to go with this version of Frankenstein but I was disappointed by the lazy path he took to get there. The result is underwhelming and even a bit boring.
