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Artistic, musical, creative, and entertaining topics of art about all things geek.
Film review: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
She’s bad, she’s good, she’s bad again. It’s hard to keep up with Maleficent, but one thing is certain: when making plans to meet the future in-laws, no one wants to hear, “Maleficent is coming to dinner”. That is an actual line of dialogue from Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, a vibrant if scattershot sequel to the 2014 hit. As a character piece, the sequel short-changes Angelina Jolie’s heroine/anti-heroine, of the glaring green contact lenses, black horns on her head and ultra-sharp prosthetic cheekbones. But as a fairy-tale action film, it is more colourful, energetic and absorbing than the first Maleficent.
Alessandro AlgardiPublished 2 years ago in GeeksDoctor Sleep review: A ‘horror-tinged superhero movie’
Not many people will have come away from Stanley Kubrick’s classic Stephen King adaptation, The Shining, with a burning desire to know what happened to the boy in the story. He was one of the film’s least engaging characters, ranking somewhere between the ghostly twins and the withered hag in the bathtub. But Doctor Sleep, a belated sequel to The Shining, wants viewers to care about the boy’s fate – and, surprisingly, it succeeds. Credible in its characterisation, rich in mythological detail, and touchingly sincere in its treatment of alcoholism and trauma, the film is impressive in all sorts of ways. But its greatest achievement is that it makes The Shining seem like a prequel – a tantalising glimpse of a richer and more substantial narrative.
Mao Jiao LiPublished 2 years ago in GeeksRewatching old films like Brief Encounter or Star Wars
In this era of peak content, we don’t have to look far to find something new to watch. Not only are more new films being released than ever before, but streaming means we can choose from thousands of movies without even leaving our sofa. You could watch something different every night and still barely make a dent in the sheer volume of entertainment on offer. So why do so many of us choose to watch films we’ve already seen – once, twice or a dozen times before? When Back To The Future appears in the TV schedule, why do we sit through it for the 43rd time, already knowing every line of the script?
Terminator Dark Fate review: Please terminate this franchise
Well, he did say he’d be back. Arnold Schwarzenegger made that promise in The Terminator in 1984, little realising that “I’ll be back” would become his most famous line of dialogue, or that the homicidal cyborg he was playing would become his defining role. True to his word, he was back for Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991, along with the original film’s writer-director, James Cameron, and its co-star, Linda Hamilton. After that, Schwarzenegger was back for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003, Terminator Salvation in 2009, and Terminator Genisys in 2015, but they wandered further and further from the lean, mean high-concept thrills of the 1984 classic. And now he is back again in Terminator Dark Fate.
Many A-SunPublished 2 years ago in GeeksThe King review: ‘Diary of a wimpy king’
This story was originally published on 3 September 2019, when The King premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated turn in Call Me by Your Name made him the poster boy for masculinity at its most delicate and sensitive: his cry-athon over the closing credits made sure of that. But he is even more delicate and sensitive as King Henry V in David Michôd’s sombre historical drama, The King. Never mind that the Prince Hal in Shakespeare’s plays started off a hard-drinking party animal. In The King, he is updated to become Emo Hal.
Alessandro AlgardiPublished 2 years ago in GeeksIs The Irishman the end of the gangster movie as we know it?
or Martin Scorsese – a filmmaker whose work has so often been characterised by a rollicking, nervous vitality – The Irishman is as sedate a gangster movie as they come. His glacial three-and-a-half-hour epic sprawls to cover the Kennedy assassination and the creeping corruption of the American labour movement, and all within a loose framework that brings together the great actors of the US crime-thriller genre: Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Joe Pesci, and for the first time, Al Pacino.
Mao Jiao LiPublished 2 years ago in GeeksCharlie’s Angels review: ‘Bland, witless and ludicrous’
The new Charlie’s Angels is one of very few action movies to have been written and directed by a woman, in this case Elizabeth Banks. Its three heroines, played by Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska, come from different ethnic backgrounds, and the theme repeated throughout is that women can do anything, but are endlessly underestimated by men. In Hollywood terms, then, the film is groundbreakingly progressive. It’s something to be celebrated and supported. Or rather, it would have been if it weren’t so terrible.
A cultural history of gaslighting
In her Oscar-winning performance in the 1944 movie Gaslight, Ingrid Bergman plays a young opera singer, Paula, traumatised by the death of the aunt who raised her, but swept into a whirlwind marriage to a charming musician (Charles Boyer). We watch as Paula becomes increasingly isolated and disorientated, convinced by her husband that she is losing her mind: items disappear; strange noises seep from a locked attic; the gas-fuelled house lighting mysteriously fades and glowers. We realise, before Paula does, that it is her husband creating these head-spinning disturbances; in one scene, she entreats him: “Are you trying to tell me I’m insane?” Her husband retorts: “Now, perhaps you will understand why I cannot let you meet people.”
Many A-SunPublished 2 years ago in GeeksCinema still needs to make space for queer women
henever minority voices in the field of film criticism or even the general movie-going public talk about expanding the canon, or even going as far as destroying it, we’re arguing for our place at the table. It is not breaking news to say that the film industry has been dominated by white men for over 100 years at this point.
Mao Jiao LiPublished 2 years ago in GeeksWhy The Piano is the greatest film directed by a woman
In 1993, Jane Campion made history when she became the first woman (and the first New Zealander) to receive the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Her haunting period romance The Piano shared the award with Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, but in BBC Culture’s critics’ poll of the 100 greatest films by women, Campion doesn’t have to share the prize a second time: The Piano was chosen as the number one film in a remarkable list that showcases more than 100 years of female filmmaking.
Alessandro AlgardiPublished 2 years ago in GeeksTop 100 films directed by women: What is the ‘female gaze’?
It asked 368 journalists, critics, film programmers and academics to name their favourite films from female directors, and the results made fascinating reading. Jane Campion’s Oscar-winner The Piano made it to the top spot, shortly followed by Cléo from 5 to 7, the real-time drama from the late great Agnès Varda. Also featured were cult filmmaker Chantal Akerman, controversial French director Claire Denis – who’s known for her defiantly individualistic, often explicitly erotic work – British working-class heroine Andrea Arnold and Hollywood greats Sofia Coppola and Kathryn Bigelow.
Top 100 films directed by women: What is ‘misogynoir’?
Magical Negro Rehab is a satirical sketch for new TV comedy series Astronomy Club. The skit brings together the traumatised supporting black cast from Driving Miss Daisy, The Green Mile and Ghost, among other films. Without a central white character in their lives, the kind-hearted and meek group struggles to find meaning in their own lives.
Many A-SunPublished 2 years ago in Geeks