Oblivion

‘Oblivion’ is a masterpiece of production design that desperately wants to be a cerebral Tarkovskian study of ravaged landscapes, existential turmoil and questions of identity … but has to, y’know, throw in some hamfisted mainstream narrative tropes in order to justify its budget.Opening with a slab of voiceover exposition, we learn that an alien antagonist destroyed the moon (causing all manner of natural catastrophe) prior to invading Earth. Someone...

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The Place Beyond the Pines

I’ve always been suspicious of people who describe the narrative of cinema as “acts” – that’s the argot (and indeed the structure) of theatre. Film is different medium, and fluid in a way that theatre could never be. Theatre doesn’t have edits and, as Bunuel pointed out, where you cut from one scene to another is where the magic happens.But fuck me, it’s difficult to approach Derek Cianfrance’s ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ without discussing its...

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Papadopoulous & Sons

In some respects, writing about film should be easy. When every narrative beat plays out exactly as you anticipated, when the romantic subplots conclude with pairings-off straight out of Rom-Com 101, and when the central conflict that gives the film such dynamic as it has is resolved in crowd-pleasing, heart-warming fashion, writing about that film should be easy, right? Toss out the words “formulaic” and “predictable”, cite a couple of examples,...

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Marley Shelton

Happy 39th to Marley Shelton. I feel a viewing of 'Planet Terror' coming on ....

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Possession

Imagine you’re a highly respected director, albeit one working under the strictures of state censorship. You’ve poured two years of your life and all of your creative endeavours into an epic science fiction movie. So epic that it’s going to boast a running time of three and a half hours. So epic that it’s the biggest budgeted movie ever to come out of your home country. Imagine that it’s almost in the bag when the Minister for Fucking Over Artistic...

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