There’s something utterly delightful about films that not only take to wonderful fantastical places but which remember that, sooner or later, we will have to return to the far more ordinary surrounds of everyday life. It’s that beguiling way of the day-to-day and the whimsically magical that has made Continue Reading
Movies
Movie review: See You Up There (Au revoir là-haut)
What could be more horrifying than the existential nightmare of war? Surely that is the apotheosis of every last cruelly dark facet of humanity given the form of guns, violence and senseless death? It would hard to argue against that assertion but in writer/director Albert Dupontel film See You Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: BioPunk and the junk status of the future
SNAPSHOT Biopunk is set in London in 2054, some thirty years after a virus has devastated half the world’s population and transformed them into something other than human. (synopsis via YouTube (c) DUST) The future huh? We’re not desperately enamoured with the idea of it at present are we? Continue Reading
Draw me an Oscar! Watch this supercut of every Best Animated Feature winner (2002-2017)
From Shrek to Spirited Away and Finding Nemo and The Incredibles to WALL-E and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Big Hero 6, UP to Inside Out and Zootopia, there have been some mighty fine winners of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. With the Academy Continue Reading
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the importance of film editing (video essay)
Michel Gondry’s masterfully poignant 2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of those rare quirky films that not only packs an emotional punch, and how, but also says something truly meaningful. Telling the story of a heartbroken man, Joel (Jim Carrey) who submits to a prcoedure that wipe Continue Reading
Movie review: Finding Your Feet
There is a particular kind of film at which the British film industry excels at an order of magnitude greater than pretty much anyone else on the planet. In these movies, a person has variously fallen on hard times/lost their way/had long-held assumptions shaken and find themselves almost catastrophically Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: The sweet hopefulness of Cautionary Tales
When I look back on all the many ways my parents tried to get me to behave – like I was ever naughty! Actually as an eldest child I behaved really well … yeah, yeah, I know opportunity lost – I have to laugh at the lengths they went Continue Reading
Script to screen: Bringing Wall-E to memorable life
(image courtesy IMP Awards) Pixar have long been the masters of creating meaningful, evocative storytelling that touches the soul with sometimes the simplest of gestures or words. One of their greatest achievements is WALL-E, the story of a lone refuse clean up robot left behind on a disastrously polluted Continue Reading
Lost in created worlds: The most beautiful animation scenes in movie history
One of the most appealing aspects of animation is the ability it gives storytellers to take us to a breathtakingly diverse range of worlds, times and places that might otherwise elude us. While CGI has not caught up to animation’s imaginative possibilities in many ways, there is still something Continue Reading
Movie review: Evening Shadows
There is something deeply and liberatingly powerful about finally owning who you are. Finally being your “authentic self”, to dip into Oprah’s pool of reassuring words of New Age-tinged wisdom, not only quell those internal battles that come from living a double life, but free you to accomplish all Continue Reading