Far be it from me to disagree with our staff, but I would hard-pressed to name 30 films from 2015 that I would consider among the “best” of the year. The same can’t be said for film music, though. As predictable as each superhero template or franchise reboot may have been this year, composers keep …
Picking the best movies that come out in any given year is no easy feat. With over 800 movies released theatrically, there’s plenty to digest. As we reach the halfway point of the year, we decided to publish a list of our favourite movies thus far, in hopes that our readers can catch up on …
Picking the best movies that come out in any given year is no easy feat. With over 800 movies released theatrically, there’s plenty to digest. As we reach the halfway point of the year, we decided to publish a list of our favourite movies thus far, in hopes that our readers can catch up on …
Picking the best movies that come out in any given year is no easy feat. With over 800 movies released theatrically, there’s plenty to digest. As we reach the halfway point of the year, we decided to publish a list of our favourite movies thus far, in hopes that our readers can catch up on …
With a narrative built on repetition – the cyclical nature of seasons, feelings and passions – The Duke of Burgundy’s unique structure defies traditional plot and narrative in favour of sensations and experiences. The film most notably has credits in the opening sequence for both the choice fragrance and the lingerie designs, a hint at the precedence luxury and sensuality has within this world. It becomes abundantly clear that breaking the film down in terms of plot betrays its absolute appeal as a masterpiece in haptic vision. (‘Haptic’ refers to ‘touching with your eyes’, though how can we similarly evoke the sensation of smell? Film criticism is lacking in this regard. We need an extensive study on the evocation of smell in cinema, just as there are studies on the way filmmakers conjure sound and music in silent cinema.) Written and directed by Peter Strickland, the film is about a lesbian couple engaged in an increasingly escalated S&M relationship, and when they’re not role-playing, they are lepidopterists (they study butterflies and moths).
A couple of years ago, Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio seemed to materialise from the ether and spear the hearts of giallo and cult murder movie fans everywhere with its exquisitely executed homage to the murdering grounds of Argento, Bava and Martino, so his long-anticipated follow-up as been eagerly received throughout the international festival circuit. This time Strickland has mounted a similar etymology of cult movie history in the form of 1970’s Eurotrash exploitation pictures, soft-core seductions from the likes of Jess Franco or Umberto Lenzi, with a reincarnation complete with creeping zooms, trance-like montages, and a rather flippant approach to narrative coherence, sacrificed on the altar of pure cinematic sensation.
The Hype Cycle is News Editor Brian Welk’s roundup of industry news, reviews and predictions of everything Oscar, boiled down into weekly power rankings of the buzziest and most likely contenders in this year’s awards season. This article is Part 2 of this week’s Hype Cycle column. Read Part 1 from yesterday. 7. Foxcatcher and …
7. Leviafan (Andrey Zvyagintsev) Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return and Elena were mysterious, slow-burning films. His 2014 entry, Leviafan, described by IMDb as “human insecurity in a ‘new country’” should mark a definite return to the Cannes Film Festival. 6. Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film Once Upon a Time in …