Deconstructing the machinery of cinema.
Take Takeshi Kitano. He is an extremely famous figure in Japanese entertainment. He started off as a stand-up comedian, performing under the name Beat Takeshi. He segued into acting under the same name, and in a long career he has also worked as a singer, talk show host, writer, director, film editor, talent agent, poet, ...
The life of New York high schooler Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is thrown into disarray when he is stung by a radioactive spider and whipped up into an inter-dimensional conflict involving not one but six alternative iterations of Spider-Man. Together they must defeat the city's famed criminal boss Wilson Fisk before he opens a portal ...
Jonas Nightengale (Steve Martin) and his road train carry a combination of preaching and faith healing from one small American town to the next. It is all a fraudulent simulation, of course, with Nightengale's charismatic preaching driving credulous locals to donate him thousands of dollars a night in the name of the Lord. When his ...
Always push your viewing habits. I am not demanding that you do so constantly, but always make sure you push a little on your comfort zones. If you only ever watch science fiction, go watch a straight drama. If you only watch Hollywood, go watch an independent film. If you watch a lot of films ...
If there is a topic that seems to dominate among film geeks this year, it is Walt Disney's growing program of live-action adaptations based on their animated back catalogue. It was only back in late May that I wrote: 'It is a program of films powered by crass commercialism and audience nostalgia, and most of ...
Peter (Eason Chan) is a hairdresser living in Hong Kong. He meets a mysterious girl with an eyepatch, June (Shu Qi), and they have a one-night stand. He subsequently meets her again, and discovers the reason she wears the patch: June sees ghosts and apparitions with her left eye. Once drawn into her supernatural world, ...
One of the best films I have ever seen about art is Julian Schnabel's 1996 biographical drama Basquiat, which related the brief career of its titular New York contemporary artist. The film introduced me to Schnabel - a fine artist moonlighting as a film director - as well as its brilliant star Jeffrey Wright, of whom ...
