(Ed. Note: This was originally published at The Matthew’s House Project.) In the first scene of Unknown Pleasures, a teenager rides his motorcycle through the streets of Datong, the heart of a Chinese province as affected by its rapid economic development as it is by the Western influences that this commercial growth has enabled it to embrace. […]
(Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) Kings and Queen is about is about the sort of people who are self-deluded, and what happens when these treasured delusions are no longer conceivable. Adjacent to this theme is a collection of characters that are not only deluded, but are so caught in their idiosyncracies that […]
(Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) The Weeping Meadow, the first installment in a planned trilogy narrating the fortunes of Greece in the 20th century, is an odd sort of history. More operatic than descriptive, more transcendental poesis than mere reportage, and more steeped in vision than memory, it is legitimately Homeric […]
(Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) “Towards an Appreciation of the Ridiculous Jaguar Shark” Others have covered this film well enough, so I only offer a passing remark. All the while reveling in a battery of self-references lining the interior of Anderson’s script, The Life Aquatic also seems bent on taking on a life of […]
(Ed. Note: This was orginally published at Image Facts.) Tae-suk’s residential philosophy is one especially poignant in an age where status and living space are becoming more closely linked than ever. The comic Steven Wright once said, “I have a hobby. I have the world’s largest collection of sea shells. I keep it scattered on beaches […]
(Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) Factotum is as low key as it gets. Subtitled “Man of Many Jobs,” it chronicles the first stage in the rise to fame of Henry Chinaski, the literary alter-ego of Charles Bukowski. Moving erratically (and humorously) from job to job, Chinaski finances his penchant for booze and gambling […]
(Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) A History of Cronenberg Cronenberg is as much an aesthetic brand as Lynch or Julie Taymor. Directors such as these often move from genre to genre, but they always leave their particular traces on whatever films they are making. There are always a few dusty corners in […]
(Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) In Which Brakhage Meets a Factory Installed Apple Video Editing Software Program. I am a bit late coming to this one. It finally hit the UK this fall and for its entire run I was determined not to see it. There was just something about it […]
(Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) “Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.” Last Days is a religious film. A loosely fictional account of the days leading up to the suicide of the lead singer of an internationally famous grunge band, it is an extended meditation on the death of Kurt Cobain. […]