What do you do when you find out you are extremely unlikely to like a movie you are watching now? Do you switch it off? Do you persevere? Do you bear it with clenched fists and a slapped-on grin, murmuring to yourself it would all be over soon and that you must slug it out because turning it off would be tantamount to desertion?
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If you were taken into a screening blindfolded and asked to definitively say – in the absence of opening credits – who directed the movie based solely on what it looked like, how many minutes would it take you to identify a Michael Bay movie? One? Two? Under a minute? Fair enough, the jig would be up the minute you saw a car transform, but I think a statistical audience member who doesn’t skip his blockbusters would likely identify a Bay-directed effort rather quickly just by putting together the confluence of hard and fast cuts, the golden hour sheen, canted angles, orbiting shots and era-appropriate pop/rap music blaring through the speakers.
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Ti West and Rob Zombie are two sides of the same coin. Although superficially their movies do not look alike at all, their connected at the hip because both filmmakers through their work express similar emotions; only differently. And X might be the definitive lynchpin between them.
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When I was laying my head to sleep on the eve of the Oscar night (and for clarity it might be useful to note I do not live in the US and the ceremony itself does not kick off until well into the early hours), I was overcome by a feeling of indifference towards this entire affair. For the first time in my adult life, I was not even remotely interested in following the Awards season enough to make my own predictions about who was going to take the top prize, or even to talk to my friends and colleagues about it. Granted, the pandemic, which according to some has come to an end, has successfully eliminated the coffee break and watercooler culture at work where these types of conversations would usually take place, but if I wanted to, I could always take to Twitter and other social media to look for meaningful discussions. But I decided not to.
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I don’t like the idea of writing a personal update. It honestly feels defeatist even as I am typing these words. My brain is actively fighting against me here and all of my inner voices (and there are a few) are screaming in unison that if I have the time to write this pile of verbiage, I definitely have time to write something different. Like a review. Or anything, really.
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There’s more than one Belfast. There’s Belfast you know from history classes or from accruing knowledge about the world in your own capacity. There’s Belfast you find on postcards – “Venice of the North” as Belfast City Council would like you to see it as – brimming with nightlife, greenery and tourist attractions. There’s Belfast you can visit where you will find out that the glitz of tourism exists side-by-side with the vestiges of its troubled and bloody history. There’s Belfast you can move into where you will find truly amazing people full of warmth and candour and who are putting their best foot forward to work through an intergenerational PTSD.
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What is the point of a remake? Even more fundamentally, what is the reason for retelling any story? Well, at the most basic level, the idea of recounting the same stories is probably the most ancient way of record-keeping that predates the invention of writing, so it’s hard to criticize the general concept of reaching back into the vast expanses of pre-existing stories and giving them a do-over.
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I think it goes without saying that Adam McKay’s movies are about as subtle as a fart in a bathtub and despite their seemingly wide-reaching appeal, their purpose may not be that obvious. Even though he has made a departure from making out-and-out comedies like The Other Guys or Anchorman and moved towards making socially and politically aware satires like The Big Short and Vice, it is my belief that viewers by and large did not attune themselves to what he is currently doing, which is why his movies are weirdly polarizing. And his latest outing, Don’t Look Up, is no different in this regard.
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In this episode of the show we marked the arrival of 2022 by talking about the devil. And photos in pickle jars. And corpses in hydromassage bathtubs. In other words, we trained our sights on Peter Hyams’ 1999 Arnie vehicle End of Days.
Continue readingSince we are still within the narrow window of opportunity to look back upon 2021, I imagined it would be a good idea to – in addition to counting down my favourite films, a task at which I may have failed – examine how far I have come (it at all) in my journey as a self-taught writer and a self-confessed cinepreacher. Therefore, I thought I’d share the top 10 articles I wrote last year I am most proud of.
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Flasz On Film 