March Favorites: No Sleep
5 stars: love it
4 stars: really like it
3 stars: like it
2 stars: don't like it
1 star: hate it
Normally not a fan of this one but Wizard People, Dear Reader significantly improved matters
At its best, this is a film that serves as a springboard for a family meeting. It feels like a cautionary after-school special for the digital age, where most of the characters have been driven to their worst behavior because of the seemingly limitless possibilities online. The issues raised here are conversations that parents and kids should be having together but, at this stage in my own life, I'm in a familial limbo and feel that this not-so-entertaining advice wasn't for me.
This is an exceptionally beautiful and haunting short doc. It's been a long time since I've seen a slaughterhouse film and I haven't ever seen one so artfully done. I've successfully avoided consuming (eating/wearing/using) animal products for 8 years because of works like this one and it was nice to receive such an impactful reminder as to why I'd started this boycott in the first place: animals *clearly* have an interest in not dying. That's plenty reason for me.
One of my favorite things about my annual pre-Halloween horror binges is returning to the work of Mr Cronenberg. Scanners (arguably Cronenberg's big-budget tipping point) has somehow eluded me over the years but, with this year's Criterion BluRay release, I wasn't about to let that happen again.
Scanners delivered what I expected of it: exploding heads and bursting skin, telepathy depicted through constipated facial expressions, and dated on-screen computing. I was impressed by Michael Ironside's performance and enjoyed the nuances…