I saw the TV glow for the sixth time in the cinema today. After each of the five times following my first viewing, when spilling my shredded guts onto the page, I’ve tried to muster the words to do this film justice; each time I’ve failed.
This is my Pink Opaque, a magnet that calls me back again and again every time it ends and I am plunged back into this midnight realm. I am only now reckoning with the…
To be a true once-carnivore vegan is to face the guilt of the suffering directly caused by your short-lived cravings. It's to come to terms with the life you have left behind and to vow to protect, and encourage the protection of, the species who were once exploited, violated, enslaved, tortured and mercilessly killed for yours and others' burgers, bacon sandwiches, omelettes, four-cheese pizzas, yoghurts, lattes, belts, sofas, jumpers, coats and entertainment.
It is a burden that I still carry,…
This was, without a doubt, one of the best experiences I've had in the cinema. It's a film that makes you so acutely aware of your position in the world - about your position at that moment in front of a screen - and the implications of that, the suggestion that we're all ghosts inside our own stories that themselves might as well be films. Rows of heads in front of me lined up with rows of heads on screen,…
A characteristically intelligent study from the ever-innovative Ben Rivers, who here pokes (even more) fun at the traditional ethnographic documentary and its imperialistic tendencies by blowing everything out of the water with a sumptuous sci-fi story that exaggerates geospatial stereotypes with teasing irony. It’s a beautifully captured film with a quick wit and a sly sense of humour - really a fine entry into a great canon of work.
As engaging and important as this subject is, and however revolutionary the hypothesis presented is, it doesn’t stop the prevailing feeling that the recognisable images from all of your favourite supernatural classics are merely an afterthought, an attempt at making a very heady but timely conversation piece feel like cohesive cinematic investigation. The whole thing only feels congruent as a general thematic notion, with there being no real good reasoning for it being an essay film, even a film entirely,…
A sweet little film for a sweet afternoon.
I always tell myself 'oh, yeah, I think I have some kind of an idea about what's going on' and then remember a scene I had forgotten that just ruins my theory. That's why I love it with all my heart. Does a film need to actually say something? Does it need to do anything? Why does it have to make sense? A reminder of this every so often is fantastic, especially if that reminder gives me the same morbid enchantment David Lynch manages to put into every one of his films, long or short.
