Showing 1 - 7 of 7
Bergman’s enigmatic masterpiece
Life, Plalai Faifa, Published on 02/05/2014
» Ingmar Bergman’s most memorable films almost always drew on his personal memories and especially his personal torments. But by the time Persona was released in 1966, even his greatest admirers may have been tiring of his ongoing argument with God, which he had been chronicling on-screen for a decade.
Subtle spooks
Life, Plalai Faifa, Published on 21/03/2014
» Horror films are everywhere now, with zombies and vampires rampant, but we don’t see many traditional ghost stories. The reason isn’t hard to guess — most of the audience for horror consists of young gore geeks who drop off to sleep if 15 minutes pass without someone munching someone else’s guts. When they wake up, the verdict is announced — boring!
British grand guignol
Life, Plalai Faifa, Published on 07/03/2014
» Fans of two films that stand near the top of the long list of British supernatural thrillers, Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and multi-director shocker Dead Of Night were poorly served on DVD. Although the image quality in both cases was acceptable, the soundtracks had deteriorated dreadfully. Listening to the main title music of either film was an experience to make the teeth itch, and the screechiness the degraded soundtrack inflicted on young Sally Ann Howes’s voice in Dead Of Night was real fingernails-on-blackboard torture.
Cinematic chameleon
Life, Plalai Faifa, Published on 15/02/2013
» One of the secondary pleasures that certain movies offer to true addicts is the chance to spot affectionate nods to favourite films that their creators have slipped into them. These can be parodies of famous scenes and images that everyone is expected to recognise _ King Kong on top of the Empire State Building, the shower scene from Psycho, practically anything from Casablanca _ but are more revealing when they come from more obscure films that have special meaning for the director and give some insight into where his heart lies.
Thirties shocker still affecting
Life, Plalai Faifa, Published on 27/07/2012
» When the Motion Picture Production Code, a draconian set of moral censorship guidelines, came crashing down on Hollywood studios in 1934 it put an end to one of the most adventurous eras in American film-making, extinguishing a spark that was not to be revived until the early 1970s.
Silenced speaks volumes
Life, Plalai Faifa, Published on 27/04/2012
» It would be hard to think of many subjects uglier than the one surveyed in excruciating detail by director Hwang Dong Hyuk in this film. Adapted from a novel by Cong Jee-yeong that was in turn based on actual events that took place in Korea in the mid-1990s, Do-ga-ni centres on a Korean school for deaf children where the students are routinely beaten and raped by the teachers and staff. It follows the events through a young teacher who discovers the extent of the abuse and then finds that all attempts to stop it are frustrated as the local police and Christian community close ranks to protect the offenders.
Paranoia rules
Life, Plalai Faifa, Published on 20/01/2012
» John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing is about monsters from space in the same way that Lars von Trier's recent Melancholia is about the end of the world. Both films use spectacular catastrophes out of science fiction to show the power of destructive mental states that can literally pull the world out from under those affected by them.