Spotlight on Film

Short Reviews: Utama (2022), & There Will Be No Leave Today (1958)

Utama [2022] – ★★★1/2 Everything seems close to extinction in this film: a place, a mode of life, a language (Quechua), and maybe even the film itself, with its slow pace which may now be compared unfavourably with the recent popular trend of fast-paced, genre-bending flicks. Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s debut film Utama follows an elderly…

Short Animation: Le Retour des Vagues

Loving home is a place you always carry in your heart. Le Retour des Vagues (The Return of Waves) is a French short animation about a young man who returns to his hometown and finds that time has stopped there. It is a 2020 graduation project work by three students (Manon Cansell, Alejandra Guevara Cervera…

“Godland” Review

Godland [2022] – ★★★★ “To get back up to the shining world from there/My guide and I went into that hidden tunnel,/And Following its path we took no care/To rest, but climbed: he first, then I-so far/, through a round aperture I saw appear/Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears/, Where we came forth, and…

San Francisco: 7 Films Showcasing the City

“San Francisco has only one drawback – it is hard to leave“, once said Rudyard Kipling, and it is very easy to see the city’s glorious appeal: situated on hills and surrounded by a vast bay, it looks almost like some fairy-tale land with its jaw-dropping landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island,…

“The Widow of Saint-Pierre” Review

Patrice Leconte (1947-) is a French director and writer known for such films as The Girl on the Bridge (1999) and Man on the Train (2002). Much underrated, he is also the one who directed a historical drama-comedy and Academy Award-nominee Ridicule (1996), as well as an outrageous, black humour-suffused animation The Suicide Shop (2012)….

“M3GAN” Review

M3GAN [2023] – ★★★ Everything in M3GAN is “in vogue”: sentient artificial intelligence (readers must have had their fill of it with Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and McEwan’s Machines Like Me, and viewers – with After Yang (2021), Finch (2021) and Brian and Charles (2022)), cinematic mishmash of genres, and, in line with Ari Aster’s popular…

“Harvey” Review

Harvey [1950] – ★★★★ 🐇While perhaps trivialising some serious issues, Harvey still presents a sweet and delightful comedy-drama about one eccentric man who befriends an imaginary (or possibly just invisible!) giant rabbit. This play-based film focuses on a 42 year-old bachelor Elwood P. Dowd (James Stewart) who is in the habit of talking to his friend…

7 Most Brutal & Violent Historical Dramas

I. The Proposition [2005] Centering around three very different brothers embroiled in the life of crime in 1880s Australia, John Hillcoat’s brutal western is bound to leave an impression. The scriptwriter of this under-seen gem is musician Nick Cave, and the story tells of a lawman (Winstone) who makes the proposition to an outlaw (Pierce):…

“The Return of Martin Guerre” Review

The Return of Martin Guerre [1982] – ★★★★ From Hitchcock’s Vertigo [1958] to Mangold’s Identity [2003], there is nothing like a film that makes the audience question the identity of a character, and The Return of Martin Guerre is not only one of those interestingly-premised films, but it is also one based on a legend from…

“Height” Review

Height [1957] – ★★★★ Italo Calvino, an Italian writer, said that “a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” If we apply this quote to a film, then Height may be one of these classics, too. Based on a novel of 1952 by Evgeny Vorobyov, Height is a…

“A Blast from the Past”: 7 Italian Cinema Recommendations

I. The Tree of Wooden Clogs [1978] This Palme d’Or winner shows “[l]ife on a farm in Italy at the end of the 19th century. Many poor country families live there, and the owner pays them by their productivity. One of the families has a very clever child, and they decide to send him to…

Film Scene Spotlight: Joel Schumacher’s Cousins

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of my followers! In spirit of all the onscreen love and its lovers, today’s highlighted film scene is from Joel Schumacher’s romantic comedy Cousins [1989], which is a remake of French comedy Cousin Cousine [1975]. Now, this film is no masterpiece by any stretch of imagination, and suffers on almost all fronts,…

“White Material” Review

White Material [2009] – ★★★★1/2 White Material is set in one unspecified French colonial African country, and follows Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert), an owner of a large coffee plantation. Well-known to the area, Maria lives on the estate with her ex-husband Andre (Christopher Lambert), her ex-husband’s father Henri and grown-up son Manuel. However, there are…

Top 10 “Mary Poppins” Songs: Ranked

I. Chim Chim Cheree This is the catchiest tune in the whole film. It is so simple and yet so inexplicably endearing. Bert nearly steals the whole film from Mary Poppins with this song, showing his cheery disposition, but also hinting at the underlying injustice – “the social ladder has been strung”. Pavement Artist is the…

7 Films Based on Graphic Novels/Comics

In no particular order and excluding “superhero” comics, including Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and the Marvel Universe. I. Alan Moore is a force to be reckoned with. He is the creator of so many epic graphic novels, from Watchmen and Batman: The Killing Joke to Jerusalem and V for Vendetta. His graphic novel From Hell (1999)…

7 Films Based on Japanese Manga

I. Edge of Tomorrow is a great sci-fi film about one Major who wakes up with each day being repeated, but the catch is that this day is the day of the invasion battle with aliens. This Groundhog Day-concept works brilliantly in the story, and Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt’s chemistry is unbelievably good. However,…

Short Animation: Dinner for Few

This highly thought-provoking animation of 2014 is from animator Nassos Vakalis. It presents a powerful allegory of a society, from the use of resources and corruption to the control of the masses and revolution.

10 Great Films Based on Plays (Part II)

I enjoyed so much compiling the Great Films Based on Plays list last year that I thought that a sequel was in order. As Part I, this list is in no particular order and excludes adaptations of Shakespearean plays. I. Doubt [2008] Play: Doubt: A Parable [2004] by John Patrick Shanley “Did he, or didn’t…

Short Animation: Happiness

Steve Cutts is a London-based illustrator and animation, and this is his short animation Happiness, where he satirises the modern society and its activities, including the goal to “find happiness” in material things and capitalistic culture. It is set to Georges Bizet’s aria Habanera from the opera Carmen.

Spotlight on Editing & Directing: Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987)

With its “body-horror” preoccupation, excessive violence, and tongue-in-cheek dialogues, RoboCop (1987) is a quintessential 1980s film, inspired by Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and made on the back of the success of The Terminator (1984). There are many things that made it good, including its cinematography provided by Jost Vacano (Das Boot (1981)), its unusual…