Tag: film
Ben Wheatley directs J. G. Ballard’s “High-Rise”: Why movies should move
This is a very simple rule, and, as with most simple rules, we must allow for a great many exceptions. But the rule still has merit. Movies are better when they move. That’s why Joon-ho Bong’s Snowpiercer is better than Ben Wheatley’s new movie High-Rise. Well, one reason, anyway. One very simple reason. The stories…
Interviewing Philippe Mora: History and Hitler Deconstructed
At some point in the early 2000s, as a young cinephile burrowing into the nooks and crannies of Australian film culture, I came across the name Philippe Mora. At the time, like many others, I understood Philippe Mora to be a director of camp horror classics like The Beast Within (1982), The Marsupials: The Howling…
Hollywood in the 1970s: 10 Films History Forgot
I became a film fan in the 1970s. It was a good decade, one of the best if we’re ranking Hollywood in such a fashion. It had a number of iconic movies. There were the blockbusters – Jaws and Star Wars – which would rewrite the rules for how Hollywood manufactured its product. There were…
Loving Jake Gyllenhaal: From City Slickers to Nightcrawler
I’ll admit it. I was not always the biggest Jake Gyllenhaal fan. But, as Richard Cohen quoted Nora Ephron at the latter’s funeral, “This is going to be like the movies. We start as enemies and end as friends.” Who better to apply a “like the movies” quote to? The son of a director/screenwriter marriage,…
Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special: The Mysterious and Ineffable
How many movies does it take to establish a pattern? Jeff Nichols, who I have previously placed on my Mt. Rushmore of directors currently in their 30s, has just released his fourth feature film. The first and third – Shotgun Stories and Mud – are realistically grounded and physically violent stories of men searching their…