You just don't seem real anymore.
Titled after an animal described in the film as being pretentious, this Austrian comedy circles around a man paid to be pretentious in the most literal sense of the term, posing as husbands, sons and friends as part of a companion-for-hire organisation. The movie initially seems like a mere skit-based quirky comedy with Albrecht Schuch (who is phenomenal in the lead role) hilariously under-reacting to everything in his real life in between pretending to…
There is nothing real outside our perception of reality, is there?
Eleven viewings later and still as fresh as ever, Videodrome is quite possibly the best film ever made about the relationship between viewers and what they view. The film's most iconic image is James Woods sticking his head inside a television set during a hallucination - an image that very much embodies what it feels like to be totally immersed in a film or a television program: the tendency…
Most anything in his films can't be regarded as arbitrary.
Did Stanley Kubrick deviate from Stephen King's novel when adapting The Shining to screen because he had a hidden agenda? Did he intend the film to be a parable for Nazism, a statement about Amerindian mistreatment or even a confession that he faked the moon landing? This stylish documentary smartly shies away from answering these questions, instead allowing us to make up our own minds as we are treated to…
It is so easy to accuse someone.
Badly injured and bedridden after falling down the stairs, a middle aged woman becomes convinced that one of her two half-siblings pushed her to avoid a discussion about selling the family home in this weird thriller from Argentina that has been compared to Misery. Both of the fully grown half-siblings are obsessed with The Wizard of the Oz with the brother attempting to create a semi-animated remake of it with chromakey special effects…
When you deal in blood, there must be rules.
While set in the same "rules and consequences" universe of the John Wick movies, this is a noticeably different spin-off that tries to do its own thing and avoid copycatting the series that spawned it. The title character here is an assassin who undergoes similar training to that which Wick had, and with several scenes of Ana de Armas learning how to fight, as well as an extended back-story with a…
It's no longer your film.
Fourth viewing tonight; this was a rewatch on the big screen at Luna Leederville - and the third time that I had seen the film on a cinema screen over the past twelve months. The movie received a round of applause and many stood around to discuss the specifics of the story and all of the weird bits and pieces afterwards, which exactly the sort of reception that a film like this deserves. While seeing…
