Jessica (Tilda Swinton) is awakened in the middle of the night by an inexplicably loud, banging thud––”a rumble from the core of the earth” as she later describes it. The premise is apparently autobiographical: Apichatpong has himself suffered from what is called exploding head syndrome, but needless to say the film has little interest in the phenomenon's medical dimension, instead using it as a starting point to pursue more esoteric ends.
We eventually learn that Jessica is a Scottish orchid…
My first thought was that this is Ferrara’s most Cassavetesian film, at least among those I’ve seen so far. Both the acting (especially Harvey Keitel’s Eddie Israel as he gives interviews and provides instruction on set) and the freewheeling camera work point in this direction, but Ferrara only uses this as a starting point to create something that is entirely his own.
As many have pointed out, Dangerous Game can be seen as a critique/deconstruction of Hollywood, both the industry…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Poet John Ashbery wrote this review for SoHo Weekly News when Out 1: Spectre played at the New York Film Festival in 1974. Since I'm unable to find it anywhere online, I'm posting it here.
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Rivette Masterpiece (s?)
Jacques Rivette's Out One / Spectre, together with his very different Céline and Julie Go Boating, is not only a magnificent film, a film totally unlike anything one has ever seen, but also one that seems to mark a turning point…
Godwin Baxter inserts the brain of an unborn baby into the body of its deceased mother, creating a Frankenbarbie whose subsequent journey of discovery through the human condition takes her from the sensory pleasures of food and sex to awareness of the suffering of others and revolutionary attempts to alleviate it. Throughout, men attempt to take advantage of this little girl in a woman's body, but despite (or perhaps because of) all adversity, Bella becomes her own person in the…
How does one even begin addressing this? Rivette's description of Out 1 comes to mind: "the fiction swallows everything up and then self-destructs" Indeed, it seems Rivette's gargantuan epic must have been a conscious point of reference as Llinás embarked on this project—La Flor clocks in at just an hour or so longer, becoming the longest film in cinephile awareness.
Six movies, or parts of movies, stitched together into an all-encompassing whole. And yet for all the grandiose aims, the film…
