The year started with Poor Things… and it shall end with it too.
It has been a rather marvellous 2024. The journey that I have taken through cinema has been absolutely exhilarating, devouring the delights the world has to offer. I, at first, had a passing interest in the film from its trailers, noting that I would eventually see it, but given my then sorta humbug nature, I needed a push. So, when Kurt asked if I wanted to see…
To do a piece of writing about Pink Flamingos is a curse. No matter what you do, it will always be a long and challenging time to create a piece that one would ultimately feel proud of. One can write too many words and not say much, or could write too few words and say too much. Where does one start in a discussion of such a film, where do you begin? The plot? The characters? The production values? The…
This was also another short that was playing on one of the TVs in the exhibition…
…it was something.
Watched this exactly as Cao Fei intended- on a CRT TV set upon a table in an area replicated to look like the Marigold restaurant in Sydney.
I found this to be quite an engaging watch, especially as part of the Cao Fei: My City Is Yours exhibition. Whereas most of Fei’s work looks at urbanisation and the idea of a global city, this work, made earlier on, took a moment to look at a village that is ultimately run…
I’ve always felt an aversion to superhero films. There was something that pissed me off for how omnipresent they are in the world of cinema, and how mediocre they seem to be. That isn’t to say there aren’t any good superhero films, but that the concept as a whole feels juvenile, second rate, and undeserving of its success. There was no way a superhero film could inspire that awe that they should.
Well, call me Werner Herzog and make me…
Ran is a pretty good movie. Alas, it didn’t floor me like what I would expect, but it’s still a well crafted work that only Akira Kurosawa could do… this time with French money.
(Remember, if you’re a master director and you’ve found yourself in a lull of financial support, turn to the French. They helped David Lynch the very same.)
Even in his mid-70s, Kurosawa showed that he still had all this power left in him, because the staggering…
