Tag: Comedy
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Holy Smoke: The power dynamics of Jane Campion
Given the overwhelming success of Jane Campion’s latest movie, The Power of the Dog, which through its world-wide Netflix release managed to find its way into the mainstream and earn 12 Oscar nominations, I decided to look back on what is arguably Campion’s least known work, Holy Smoke; a real oddity in a director’s filmography…
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Midnight Run: The Art of Buddy Comedy
What happens when you get an award-winning method actor in De Niro, a timid comedian in Charles Grodin, a young up-and-coming director in Martin Brest and tell them, Go out there and make a really good comedy about a bounty hunter going through a mid-life crisis while chasing a white collar criminal? Well, what happens…
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Bamboozled: Social Commentary Done Right
There is very few filmmakers today who are able to express genuine outrage in their movies without making it political and needlessly alienating part of their audience. Social commentary is hard to accomplish, mostly due to the constantly shifting media landscape and society. People’s sensitivities and priorities change over time. Audiences have grown to become…
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Jackie Brown: Once Upon a Time in Quentinland…
As the European release of Tarantino’s latest movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, looms over us during these warm summer days, and as the writer-director himself has been generously handing out interviews left and right stating that this may very well be his last cinematic work (it is no secret that Tarantino had always…
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What’s Going On?
It is no secret that the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, are two of the greatest living directors. There is a reason for that. The Coens are ambitious and even though most of their films deal with nihilism (The Big Lebowski), impotence (Barton Fink), doomsday (No Country for Old Men) and failure (Inside Llewyn Davis), the Coens are…
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A Bucket of Sorrow
Today’s topic: the death of the American Dream in O Brother Where Art Thou. There have been countless movies dedicated to the glorious understanding of the term “American Dream”, movies that won plenty of Oscars such as the legendary tale of a simple man who turns into an all star boxing champ in Rocky or even the story…
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Double Standards
Today’s topic: dual personality. Every once in awhile we come across the concept of having multiple personalities, especially in cinema with movies like Fight Club, Enemy or even with the character of Smeagol in The Lord of The Rings franchise. However, the subject matter is often understood and categorized as a kind of sickness, a mental disorder, which of…
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Just Like Honey
Today’s topic: cinematic poetry. What’s so special about Sofia Coppola’s Oscar winning drama Lost In Translation? For those of you who have heard something about it, it’s the story of two people who find themselves forced to stay in Tokyo for a week. The movie studies their growing relationship. It’s a delicate love story, not the…
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You Can’t Win Them All
Today’s topic: painful comedy. It’s a thing, I swear. How can I back it up? Billy Wilder’s best picture from 1960, The Apartment. Labeled as a comedy, the story of C.C. Baxter, an insurance worker who lends his apartment to his own superiors and their special ladies, in order to get a highly anticipated promotion became…
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