dystopia

Civil War

Why Civil War? Alex Garland’s thing as a writer and sometimes director seems to be high-concept, high-quality 5-minutes-into-the-future speculations with problematic endings. 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Annihilation – all are dressed up in nice conceptions, vignettes and visualisations but find

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Civil War

Why Civil War? Alex Garland’s thing as a writer and sometimes director seems to be high-concept, high-quality 5-minutes-into-the-future speculations with problematic endings. 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Annihilation – all are dressed up in nice conceptions, vignettes and visualisations but find

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Don’t Look Up

Well sure it’s obvious. Sure, there are much better movies to compare it to. Sure, it’s not that funny. But maybe it’s not a comedy. Maybe it’s just a tragedy – a dramatic form contemporary audiences aren’t so familiar with.

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Don’t Look Up

Well sure it’s obvious. Sure, there are much better movies to compare it to. Sure, it’s not that funny. But maybe it’s not a comedy. Maybe it’s just a tragedy – a dramatic form contemporary audiences aren’t so familiar with.

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Dune (2021)

Despite the enormous amount of air displaced by the arrival of this, the third screen-telling of the Frank Herbert saga, Dune is unremarkable.  It’s not bad at all. It’s a fun, big-screen, epic watch with pleasing production design, a fine cast

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Dune (2021)

Despite the enormous amount of air displaced by the arrival of this, the third screen-telling of the Frank Herbert saga, Dune is unremarkable.  It’s not bad at all. It’s a fun, big-screen, epic watch with pleasing production design, a fine cast

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I Am Mother

Until a recent general improvement in story output, the problem with many Netflix productions seemed to be an eschewing of rigorous script assessment, likely attributable to the subscription model prioritising quantity over quality. I Am Mother, a Netflix production from 2018,

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I Am Mother

Until a recent general improvement in story output, the problem with many Netflix productions seemed to be an eschewing of rigorous script assessment, likely attributable to the subscription model prioritising quantity over quality. I Am Mother, a Netflix production from 2018,

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Marriage Story

As a warning to parents about the awfulness of divorce and California divorce law in particular, this is a worthy essay. As an exploration of the many dimensions of pain entailed, it’s also a sterling effort. As an arrow aimed

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Marriage Story

As a warning to parents about the awfulness of divorce and California divorce law in particular, this is a worthy essay. As an exploration of the many dimensions of pain entailed, it’s also a sterling effort. As an arrow aimed

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The Florida Project

A more-than-you-can-eat pizza-slice of life, hot from the florid state – more specifically Orlando. It’s a short walk from Disneyland but a long, alligator-infested way downstream. The Florida Project features one of the most striking child performances in recent memory

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The Florida Project

A more-than-you-can-eat pizza-slice of life, hot from the florid state – more specifically Orlando. It’s a short walk from Disneyland but a long, alligator-infested way downstream. The Florida Project features one of the most striking child performances in recent memory

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Wheelman

The vaguely familiar Frank Grillo makes a classy and economical pitch at booting a Stallone/Van-Damme/Strachan tough-guy franchise. Director-writer Jeremy Rush has mashed Locke with Driver. As a car-chase movie, like nearly every car-chase movie other than Bullitt, it’s a fail. It

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Wheelman

The vaguely familiar Frank Grillo makes a classy and economical pitch at booting a Stallone/Van-Damme/Strachan tough-guy franchise. Director-writer Jeremy Rush has mashed Locke with Driver. As a car-chase movie, like nearly every car-chase movie other than Bullitt, it’s a fail. It

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The Shape of Water

Some strong elements combine to achieve less than their sum. A fine cast acts out some hot topics and at the helm is the director possibly trying harder than anyone else today to make movies that look good. It does

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The Shape of Water

Some strong elements combine to achieve less than their sum. A fine cast acts out some hot topics and at the helm is the director possibly trying harder than anyone else today to make movies that look good. It does

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Blade Runner 2049

Deckhard is back, Hampton Fancher is back, the rain is back, as is some of the neon, albeit faded behind some kind of airborne filth with lumps in it. Blade Runner in the eighties was a world crippled and depressed

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Blade Runner 2049

Deckhard is back, Hampton Fancher is back, the rain is back, as is some of the neon, albeit faded behind some kind of airborne filth with lumps in it. Blade Runner in the eighties was a world crippled and depressed

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Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler crawls over the line where news eats itself, not just blurring the report and the reporter but selling a kind of news that is self-creating, like reality television, with hapless unpaid actors forced to play out scenarios of some network

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Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler crawls over the line where news eats itself, not just blurring the report and the reporter but selling a kind of news that is self-creating, like reality television, with hapless unpaid actors forced to play out scenarios of some network

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Ghost In The Shell

A remake of the 1995 anime. That film’s story about semi-outlaw cyber cops chasing a rogue entity that has evolved out of the internet has been dispensed with for an episode of Find My Family, with lashings of chop socky in

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Ghost In The Shell

A remake of the 1995 anime. That film’s story about semi-outlaw cyber cops chasing a rogue entity that has evolved out of the internet has been dispensed with for an episode of Find My Family, with lashings of chop socky in

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One feels like a heroine’s journey has been extracted from something originally conceived for an ensemble cast, leaving us with not quite enough of either. There are too many characters, talking so much about what they’re doing we don’t

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One feels like a heroine’s journey has been extracted from something originally conceived for an ensemble cast, leaving us with not quite enough of either. There are too many characters, talking so much about what they’re doing we don’t

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Westworld (1973)

Michael “high concept” Crichton directs the film of his own screenplay (no novel this time). It becomes very clear where the idea for The Terminator came from as we watch Yuul Brynner reincarnate his The Magnificent Seven character in the form

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Westworld (1973)

Michael “high concept” Crichton directs the film of his own screenplay (no novel this time). It becomes very clear where the idea for The Terminator came from as we watch Yuul Brynner reincarnate his The Magnificent Seven character in the form

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Captain Fantastic

Drop-out survivalists are forced to re-enter mainstream society when a tragedy strikes. They’re like a family of doomsday preppers with a positive, if fortress, mentality and leanings toward Mao and Chomsky rather than the NRA (was this written in the 70s?). The

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Captain Fantastic

Drop-out survivalists are forced to re-enter mainstream society when a tragedy strikes. They’re like a family of doomsday preppers with a positive, if fortress, mentality and leanings toward Mao and Chomsky rather than the NRA (was this written in the 70s?). The

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Sicario

As Sicario overplays its quest to underplay itself, we arrive at a confused portrait of profound dysfunction. That may be an appropriate angle to take on another of America’s unwinnable wars (in this case the drugs and border war with Mexico),

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Sicario

As Sicario overplays its quest to underplay itself, we arrive at a confused portrait of profound dysfunction. That may be an appropriate angle to take on another of America’s unwinnable wars (in this case the drugs and border war with Mexico),

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens

For the first ten minutes or so there is nagging despair, even mourning. It feels like an awkward Star Wars themed high school reunion in a room littered with lifeless artefacts, with Disney and JJ Abrams strutting around bragging “lookit all

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens

For the first ten minutes or so there is nagging despair, even mourning. It feels like an awkward Star Wars themed high school reunion in a room littered with lifeless artefacts, with Disney and JJ Abrams strutting around bragging “lookit all

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Tomorrowland

Conflict being the essence of drama and all that, it’s not easy to pull an entertainment out of a pleasant scenario, unless it’s one under threat. In this case the utopian promise of Tomorrowland is in danger of never arriving. We’re presented with a rampant

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Tomorrowland

Conflict being the essence of drama and all that, it’s not easy to pull an entertainment out of a pleasant scenario, unless it’s one under threat. In this case the utopian promise of Tomorrowland is in danger of never arriving. We’re presented with a rampant

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The Big Sleep (1946)

 Forty-something private detective Humphrey Bogart finds himself on the case in the City of Available Young Women, chasing tails and kicking arses. The biggest mistake you could make with this putative noir classic is rewinding to try and work out

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The Big Sleep (1946)

 Forty-something private detective Humphrey Bogart finds himself on the case in the City of Available Young Women, chasing tails and kicking arses. The biggest mistake you could make with this putative noir classic is rewinding to try and work out

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Maps To The Stars

David Cronenberg’s Maps To The Stars presents a tragedy of corruption and inbreeding in high places, in this case the homes of Hollywood’s B-list. When cycles of abuse collide, incipient violence erupts and death steps in to clean up the entangling mess. A link isn’t entirely

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Maps To The Stars

David Cronenberg’s Maps To The Stars presents a tragedy of corruption and inbreeding in high places, in this case the homes of Hollywood’s B-list. When cycles of abuse collide, incipient violence erupts and death steps in to clean up the entangling mess. A link isn’t entirely

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Noah

God gets a bad rap in Noah, as Darren Aronofsky tries to construe a story that makes no physical, psychological or moral sense. A brood of hapless humans is disgorged out onto what looks like a barren coalfield with no recourse

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Noah

God gets a bad rap in Noah, as Darren Aronofsky tries to construe a story that makes no physical, psychological or moral sense. A brood of hapless humans is disgorged out onto what looks like a barren coalfield with no recourse

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