Features
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The Robber (Premiere in Paris)
10 August 2010, by Abla KandalaftToday’s pick from the Paris Cinema film festival is Benjamin Heisenberg’s The Robber, winner of the Student Jury prize. -
Mundane History (Premiere in Paris)
4 August 2010, by Abla KandalaftThis is the first of a few reviews of some of the films presented at the ParisCinema film festival in July 2010.
Mundane History (Jao Nok Krajok)
and Q & A with director Anocha Suwichakornpong -
XXY
29 July 2010, by Judy HarrisXXY weaves together three landscapes: the fluidity of the ocean, the violence of the scientist’s laboratory and the arid determinacy of life on dry land. Fifteen year old Alex, who so far has been subsumed by neither a male nor female gendered identity, is marooned on the shore. For writer/director Lucia Puenzo this is where things are forced into a fixed shape. XXY (in my opinion grossly mistitled -the film has been criticised as misrepresenting Klinefelter’s syndrome and actually (...) -
Four Lions: The Sequel
20 July 2010, by Judy HarrisChris Morris’s jihad comedy Four Lions depicts five inept Muslim ’suicide bombers’ and has been praised as a delightful expose of the ’moral idiocy’ of such an act. Here I discuss the forthcoming sequel. -
Clash of the Titans
20 July 2010, by Kelu13My expectations weren’t particularly high when I went to see the Clash of the Titans. And I must say I was looking forward to it, perhaps moved by some masochistic feeling that compels me to go see films that are going to provoke my inner academic (knowing a few things about Greek mythology). And yet I’m always up for a laugh. The movie in all its blockbuster glory fulfils what it sets out to do: it has drama, romance, fights and big scorpions. My concern is that it promises to tell a (...) -
Transamerica, a gendered perspective!
18 July 2010, by Abla KandalaftI first caught Transamerica about 15 min in, on a tiny television set in a small family-run hotel in St Malo. That was back in 2006, about a year after its release and I was working as a tour guide in France. In the first few minutes this is what I thought was going on: a very masculine-looking woman teenage hitchhiker are driving through the US. What I didn’t get was whether it was a man or a woman playing Bree. It was only when the credits rolled that I realised it was Felicity Huffman. (...) -
Kick Ass
18 July 2010, by Judy HarrisSuperheroes are something else; it’s what makes them super. The premise of Kick Ass is to make ‘the superhero’ just another performance that any geek in a wetsuit can pull off. In fact, white nerd Dave Lizewski’s turn as Kick Ass is almost as easy as the ‘homo’ persona he adopts in order to get into the bedroom and under the bra of the school hottie, Katie Deauxman. What makes Dave Lizewski’s metamorphosis from everyday nerd to crime-fighting ‘Kick Ass’ so pathetically offensive is (...) -
Bronson
18 July 2010, by Abla KandalaftThis theme is a chance to look back at what to me was one of the best films of 2009. Director Nicolas Winding Refn’s most mainstream effort since the Pusher trilogy is a surrealist portrait of one of Britain’s most notorious prisoner, Michael Peterson or as he liked to be called, Charles Bronson, whose miserably comical attempt at robbing a post office in 1974 lands him in prison. Originally meant to serve a seven-year sentence he is still behind bars, and has spent 30 of those 36 years in (...) -
Sex and the City 2
18 July 2010, by Judy HarrisI want to silently sew up every orifice of my body to violently impede my ingestion or production of any sub-atomic particle of matter. Terminate. (Vagina Eyeliner will return to this postcolonial nightmare when we’re ready to remove the stitches and inhale.) Now for some corporal haberdashery… Dir: Michael Patrick King, 2010 -
The Human Centipede
17 July 2010, by Abla KandalaftA doctor connects three people arse to mouth. A doctor connects three people arse to mouth. If I read that somewhere I think my initial reaction would be to laugh. I watched the film and didn’t laugh. One thing’s for sure, it’s not for the faint-hearted. Technically less torture-heavy than, say, the Saw franchise, I found it more stomach churning. It left me unsure whether I liked it or not. Where to begin? The premise is straightforward: somewhere in Germany, two hapless American (...)