Tag: cinephile
Interview: Dogs of Democracy and the Greek Economic Crisis
Screening at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Mary Zournazi’s Dogs of Democracy is a powerful look at the human impact of the Greek economic crisis. Zournazi eschews the normal approach to this kind of material, uses the plight of Athen’s stray dog population as a metaphor for the struggles and hopes of the Greek people.…
Message Movies: Liking Films Despite Their Perspectives
You’ve got to admit that CURNBLOG’s readers have a deep memory. Witness a comment posted by “Carlos” in response to my recent article on the movie The Promise (2016) and a statement I made in it that said this: I don’t usually urge cinephiles to run after movies with messages for altruistic purposes, as I,…
Beware the Gonzo: Exploring Bryan Goluboff’s High School Fable
To get accepted into your dream university, what would you do? Scratch that: what would you do to get accepted into your dream university if you were an ambitious seventeen-year-old? Maybe you would study hard, but that’s boring. Maybe you would decide to spice it up; maybe you would be like Eddie “Gonzalo” Gilman (Erza…
Cinema Soupçons in ‘WarGames’ and ‘North by Northwest’
I can’t think of two movies that are more alike than WarGames (1983) and North by Northwest (1959). Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. All right: a vast exaggeration. But let’s look at the similarities between them. They’re both thrillers. They both deal tangentially with the Cold War. They both feature characters on…
Youth Unmasked: Matthew Vaughan’s Kick-Ass Coming of Age Story
“I always wondered why nobody did it before me; I mean, all those comic books, movies, TV shows… you’d think that one eccentric loner would’ve made himself a costume. I mean, is everyday life really so exciting, schools and offices so thrilling that I’m the only one who ever fantasized about this? Come on, be…