I have liked pop art for as long as I can remember, but I really fell in love with the movement after seeing a large retrospective of pop art from around the world at the Tate Modern last year. There are so many ways to use this movement for revolutionary purposes, through the reappropriation of established cultural artifacts and ideologies. But, as certain artists have proven, it is also exceedingly simple to not use it…
There is no bigger proponent of Canadian cinema than myself. If a film really captures me, I’ll go out of my way to champion it. Low budget, undetectable indies sometimes need that extra push. However, no matter if the film is big or small, if the end result is wildly inconsistent, I have to throw in the towel. Case in point: Navin Ramaswaran’s shockingly inept Chasing Valentine.
One of the most exciting voices of contemporary cinema has hit that point in his career where he needs to make his first English language feature. Thankfully, unlike countless others before him, Yorgos Lanthimos managed to avoid the usual pitfalls of the “first English feature” and results in The Lobster, a film as weird and brilliant as his previous features Dogtooth and ALPS.
Filmmaking is certainly an important form of self-expression, but not all films are created equal; sometimes a film comes out that serves no purpose, makes no impact and leaves no impression. Gerard Barrett’s Glassland is a perfect example of such a film. His film completely lacks any purpose other than to be a series of images giving an illusion of motion on a screen. Glassland never rises above a TV-movie-of-the-week, and its attempts at slow and…
A film titled A Perfect Day opens itself to a lot of critical wordplay. Unfortunately, it’s not perfect and it’s not imperfect – it’s definitely somewhere in the middle. An Okay Day just doesn’t have the same ring.
Jesse Owens is a fascinating individual and he absolutely deserves a biopic, but Race is not it. Interestingly enough, the title gives away many of the film’s faults: it conflates racism and running to an uncomfortable degree. Stephen Hopkins’ movie is almost completely devoid of subtlety – it’s so naive, it hurts.
Nice People is a very timely film. In our current state of mass migration of Arabic and African refugees to European countries and the right-wing propaganda that follows such events, it is important for audiences to get a view of the conditions of these people. The fact that Nice People’s view is all wrapped up in a feel-good narrative about a happy-go-lucky sports team is just a smart strategy from documentarians Karin af Klintberg and Anders…
There are ultimately two extremes within the canon of horror cinema: those films which are focused on artistry and only use the set pieces of horror to create atmosphere, and those films which are focused on being scary without much artistic flair. Christian Hallman’s Sensoria manages to bring these two extremes together by being neither artistic nor scary, resulting in something that just seems to exist for about an hour and twenty minutes. I considered using…
