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Showing posts with the label surreal

LIFE OF PI - REVIEW

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Based on a novel by Yann Martel,  Life Of Pi  was directed by Ang Lee, who won the Best Director Oscar that year. It was a significant commercial and critical hit back in 2012, banking on its impressive 3D visuals and unusual scenario. The plot sees a Canadian journalist (Rafe Spall) meet a man called Pi Patel (Irrfan Khan) who has a wild story to tell that might be worth writing about. He describes his childhood and how he wrestled with various faiths throughout, from Christianity to Hinduism. His father eventually decides to leave India with all the animals from his zoo so the family, including a teenaged Pi, sets off on a long boat trip. One night, a storm suddenly sinks the boat and only Pi appears to survive. He sails off on a lifeboat with a couple of animals, one of which, we eventually find out, is a tiger he calls Richard Parker who turns out to be both the biggest liability and the one thing keeping Pi alert and alive. While the first act of the film sets the main theme

THE LOBSTER - REVIEW

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From director Yorgos Lanthimos, The Lobster is an absurdist black comedy set in a near future where single people are forced to pair up romantically with someone within a month and a half or else they get turned into animals. Colin Farrell is a newly single man who is escorted to a strange hotel where he begins his search for a new mate. He is given a specific number of days to meet someone and this time can only be extended if he manages to hunt and kill other single people who have escaped to live in the forest as they are not welcome in society. As you can see, this isn't exactly your typical rom-com and, in fact, it's a rather grim look at dating norms and the pressures of society in general. The very dry, deadpan humour makes it a more palatable satire but the film never sugarcoats the more brutal aspects of that dystopia. People literally lose their humanity, commit suicide, mutilate each other: this is a desperate and cruel world that forces emotional connections i

MOTHER! - REVIEW

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Directed by Darren Aronofsky, mother! is a psychological thriller from 2017 about a couple living in the countryside who get a strange visit from another couple before things get truly out of hand, to say the least. Jennifer Lawrence is the titular mother who lives in an unfinished house with her rather intense husband, a writer (played by the ever-intimidating Javier Bardem) suffering from writer's block until he is visited by a fan and his wife. The latter couple, played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer, show up randomly one day as Lawrence's character becomes increasingly suspicious of their bizarre behaviour and nervous about their influence on her husband. "mother" isn't all that normal herself as she appears to be obsessed with fixing her house and spends pretty much all her time walking around looking confused by everything. You're never quite sure what this awkward dynamic between her and her much older husband is all about since they're r

TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN - VLOG REVIEW

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I talk at length about Twin Peaks: The Return .

ENEMY - REVIEW

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Jake Gyllenhaal stars in Enemy , a strange little movie from Denis Villeneuve, the director of Prisoners and Arrival , about a teacher who discovers that a small-time actor looks exactly like him for some reason and tries to figure out why. The trailers suggested a thriller but this is really more of a low-key character study with a surreal edge. Enemy keeps you guessing from start to finish and it's likely that, even after the end credits have rolled, you'll still be thinking about it, piecing it all together. After playing a wild-eyed creep in Nightcrawler , Jake Gyllenhaal is back with yet another unique, off-beat performance (or two) as both the nervous teacher and his suspicious doppelgänger. Toronto is shot beautifully through a gold filter and Villeneuve proves himself once again capable of merging gritty and strange perfectly, much like Christopher Nolan does, as this one-man-show is framed by nightmarish visions of giant spiders. As to what the film itself mea

TOYS - REVIEW

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Robin Williams stars in this surreal comedy from 1992 directed by Barry Levinson in which a toy factory is handed over to a sadistic army General who uses its resources to create war toys. A box-office flop, Toys famously did not exactly wow critics and audiences alike even if it did receive some praise for its creative visuals. Indeed, the René Magritte-inspired art direction and costumes earned the film some Oscar nominations but little else about it managed to charm anyone. The main complaint being that, while Toys is rich in fancy sets, it is weak in terms of story and character and with a running time of over two hours that's a legitimate concern. On paper, this is a simple, straight-forward story and yet in Levinson's hands it's borderline incomprehensible. Every scene aims to entertain by showing you increasingly whimsical stuff but it all falls flat due to a lifeless, unfunny script and some criminally underwritten characters. Tonally, the film is also off as

RHINOCEROS - REVIEW

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Based on an absurdist play by Eugene Ionesco, it doesn't get much weirder than Rhinoceros , the 1974 film starring Zero Mostel as a man who slowly turns into a rhinoceros and Gene Wilder as his alcoholic friend who has to accept living in a world peopled with rhinos. If you went into this one expecting The Producers , then you might end up feeling slightly confused about what you've just witnessed. Rhinoceros is unapologetically surreal and abstract as characters talk about some kind of rhinoceros pandemic where people literally become rhinos until it becomes a worldwide event but you never actually see one of them. This certainly helps sell the fact that the world is going completely mad but it makes for a stagey film and some might feel almost claustrophobic watching it. It really is like sitting through an absurdist play but, since it's also directed with plenty of movement and energy by Tom O'Horgan, it's also like watching one insane whirlwind of a film.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1999) - REVIEW

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Several years before Tim Burton rebooted Lewis Carroll's surreal masterpiece with all the 3D bells and whistles, we got this Alice In Wonderland TV movie in 1999 as an all-star cast took on the classic story. There was something irresistible about this interpretation of Alice In Wonderland as, not only would it be packed with great actors in familiar roles but it was the perfect opportunity to explore parts of the tale the older versions never explored and show off some creative new visuals. The film starts very differently from the book, which is a little off-putting at first, but soon enough Alice goes to Wonderland and the story finally begins in a faithful way with some added moments from "Through The Looking Glass" thrown in. The first thing you'll notice is Tina Majorina (known for  Napoleon Dynamite and Veronica Mars ) feels somewhat miscast as Alice: her performance is much too awkward, her English accent isn't convincing and that yellow dress she&#

THE LITTLE PRINCE - REVIEW

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In France, The Little Prince is a true children's classic, one of those iconic fairy tales that's so perfect as it is that every adaptation since has paled in comparison. This month, Netflix brings us this animated film loosely based on Antoine de Saint-Exupery's novella. Bizarrely pulled from theaters a week before its 3D cinema release, the film was instead distributed on the popular streaming network and it's done well with critics and audiences alike. A very loose adaptation of the book, the film focuses on the story of a little girl and her mother as they move into a new house and the latter plans her daughter's entire life before she enrolls into a prestigious school. The little girl befriends an old man who lives next door as he introduces her to the story of The Little Prince. The parts of the movie that tell the classic story, I must admit, look beautiful: the stop-motion work is impressive and the paper-themed visual style proves to be a perfect matc

PERFECT BLUE - REVIEW

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Made in 1997 and based on the novel of the same name, Perfect Blue is one of those rare anime features which could have easily been live-action but which works so well as what it is that it's hard to picture it as anything else. A psychological thriller, Perfect Blue follows a character called Mima, the leader of a popular girl band called CHAM! who decides to retire from her music career in order to focus on trying to be a respected actress. Unfortunately, she learns that her new career is a very different, much scarier path to take which demands various un-glamorous undertakings which, she fears, might end up ruining her life. Throughout all this she is not only plagued by a creepy fan who may or may not be messing with her through the internet but also by the ghost of her old self who constantly judges everything she does and might just be driving her insane. Eventually, strange murders start occurring around her and the film world, her hallucinations, her dreams and reali