Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin is a story about revenge; pure, aggressive and passionate revenge. The need for revenge runs deep throughout this intense drama that focusses on very little else. Revenge remains the film’s only theme and focus, because that’s all it needs. We first meet the film’s protagonist, Dwight, whilst he takes a bath – a … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: May 2014
Frank.
There are just too many things that have inspired and influenced Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank so I won’t even begin to go into them. But I will say this: this is not the biography of either Frank Sidebottom or Chris Sievey, although both have had an impact on the film in different ways. When Jon, a slave to … Continue reading
The Wind Rises.
Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film is hard to review fairly because of our awareness that it is his last – or so he says. For decades, Miyazaki has been animating, directing and writing for cinema and is responsible for some of contemporary cinema’s most moving and philosophical animated films. A master of his specific style of … Continue reading
Godzilla.
As a child of the late nineties and early noughties, my younger years were full of car-crash blockbusters that failed to impress critics but made a lot of money. As a result of this, a small percentage of my recent years have been spent rediscovering the truth about these films. Movies that enthralled me at … Continue reading
Man on the Moon.
The most beautiful element of Milos Forman’s Man on the Moon is that it encapsulates everything that performance artist Andy Kaufman was about and believed in. I say “performance artist” specifically because it is important to understand, above anything else, that Andy Kaufman was not a comedian. He didn’t claim to be and didn’t want to be … Continue reading
Short Film Reviews: Jeremiah Kipp.
It is a rare and joyous delight when I am contacted and asked to review a director’s work. Today, it is director Jeremiah Kipp’s work that I will be discussing. Jeremiah Kipp is based in New York and has been making short films and commercials for over a decade. The three films he has asked me to … Continue reading
What the F**kland.
“We have a long and proud history of recognising the right of others to determine their own destiny.” – Margaret Thatcher on the Falkland Islands. (1982) In 1995 Danish directors Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg created Dogma 95. A film-making movement that revolved around a specific manifesto, Dogma 95 created a way for unknown … Continue reading
The Man Who Knew Too Much. (1956)
Alfred Hitchcock once discussed both of his versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much with François Truffaut, in a very lengthy interview that Truffaut claimed lasted for 50 hours. Hitchcock describes his first imagining of the film, from 1934, as the work of a “talented amateur” and the remake, which he himself created over two decades … Continue reading
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