Out to own today:
Miles Ahead
 | “He’s probably more profitable dead than alive now, huh?” Harper Hamilton (Michael Stuhlbarg) Biopics are getting as bad as the rom-com and horror genres in terms of quality to quantity ratio. Veering so often to the lazy, the biographical movie often attempts to cram an entire life into two hours to lacklustre, uninsightful effect. That the mediocre, middle-brow efforts still get made by the boatload can perhaps be argued to be due to their undeserved reward at the Oscars, see A BEAUTIFUL MIND, THE KING’S SPEECH, RAY, WALK THE LINE, etc. etc. Contrast the greats (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, RAGING BULL, AMADEUS, SELMA), they share an avoidance of cramming an entire existence into their runtime. [To read more, click here.] |
Knight of Cups
 | “Where did I go wrong?” Rick (Christian Bale) Might writer-director Terrence Malick, in self-flagellation, be asking himself the same question at the result of his latest? At a public screening of THE TREE OF LIFE in 2011, part way through, behind me, one of an exasperated couple expounded to the other, “I told you we should have gone to see THOR!” Previously, the reclusive filmmaker has used narration accompanying vivid sequences to poetic effect; the pinnacles being THE THIN RED LINE and THE NEW WORLD. His Brad Pitt-starrer tipped his style over into pretentiousness and obfuscation. Don’t get me started on tedious follow-up, TO THE WONDER. Yet, such an inspired and mysterious visualizer has so many queuing to see the next (you should have seen the crowds, for a 1600-seat auditorium, three-quarters of an hour before the press screening!) [To read more, click here.] |
The Colony
 | “I don’t know whether he’ll be a human again,” Doctor (Lucila Gandolfo) General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup in 1973 in Chile, becoming dictator until 1990. Multiple atrocities were committed. National wounds still understandably raw, filmmakers Pablo Larraín and Patricio Guzmán have been probing the events and repercussions, through narrative fiction and documentary respectively, with skill. Instead of cataloguing abuses, they have approached the subject askew. The aftermath of tyranny can be hard to swallow for multiple reasons; shifting the context therefore might, in the hands of the deft, refract (not dilute) the trauma for potentially profound commentary. [To read more, click here.] |
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