Splice: spliced-together movie unravelling at the joins
Vincenzo Natali, “Splice”, Dark Castle Entertainment (2010) Fans of former Oscar Best Actor winner Adrien Brody must be wondering how their man came to be slumming it…
nausika
German and German-language Films
Inside the Cabinet of famous German Expressionist film
Robert Wiene, “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari” (1920) Seeing this German Expressionist silent film classic at the Australia’s Silent Film Festival showing in Sydney recently…
The Hunger: glossy and glamorous but in need of a remake anyway
Tony Scott, “The Hunger” (1983) One of a number of 1980s-made movies in the remake production line, this glossy flick was Tony Scott’s directorial debut about…
Blowup: blown up out of proportion to actual charms
Michelangelo Antonioni, “Blowup”, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (1966) I’d been warned by a friend that this movie was over-rated, and possibly “Blowup” is famous among a lot…
French and French-language Films
Alphaville: Lemme caution you, it’s a sci-fi flick like no other
Jean-Luc Godard, “Alphaville”, Athos Films (1965) On the surface “Alphaville” is just one of many episodes in the career of stereotypical hard-boiled trenchcoat-suited detective Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine). Caution’s immediate mission is…
Inception: overhyped film remains in dream limbo
Christopher Nolan, “Inception” (2010) I found this film disappointing despite the ingenious combination of science fiction with the conventions of an action heist film, based on the…
The Runaways: Cherie Bomb turns out to be a fizzler
This homage to the 1970s all-female hard rock band The Runaways (Floria Sigismondi, The Runaways, Apparition / Sony Pictures Entertainment 2010) had a lot of advance…
Looking for ramen and vending machines but getting oden-kan and pachinko machines instead
Patrick W Galbraith, The Otaku Encyclopedia: An insider’s guide to the subculture of Cool Japan, Kodansha International Ltd, Tokyo, 2009 (ISBN 978-4-7700-3101-3) As a sometimes avid…
Control: apt title for Joy Division / Ian Curtis biopic where control is not much in evidence
It’s apt that this biopic about Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis should be called Control because, apart from the reference to the famous Joy Division…
Nowhere Boy
You don’t need to know much about The Beatles or John Lennon in particular to watch Sam Taylor-Wood’s Nowhere Boy (Ecosse Films / Icon), a fictionalised…