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Showing posts from August, 2017

A Ghost Story

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[Yep, this is going to be another one of those reviews. One where I urge you not to see the trailer, not to read a plot synopsis. You just need to see this film, as soon as possible. Trust me.] A Ghost Story may have been one of the riskiest films for an established director to make. David Lowery, fresh from directing last year's remake of Pete's Dragon, returned to his indie roots to make a film featuring Casey Affleck walking around under a sheet 90% of the time and Rooney Mara eating a whole pie, uninterrupted, for 5 minutes. This could have been the death knell of his career.  It actually turns out to be the complete opposite. This may in fact be Lowery's defining work. He has crafted a film so potent, so powerful, so overwhelming that it's subheading should be Existential Crisis: The Movie. Its deep probing of mortality, humanity's response to grief and the bleakness of the human life cycle may hold similarities with much of Terrence Malick's work, p

Dunkirk [IMAX]

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To call Dunkirk immersive is a major understatement. The latest project from blockbuster king Christopher Nolan, who has consistently pushed the boundaries with films such as the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and Memento, tells the story of one of the defining moments of World War II in extraordinary fashion, throwing the viewer headfirst into the horrors of the conflict with every gunshot and explosion having a brutal impact. In this way it is in fact the perfect war movie, a film not so much about war but a film that literally is war. Add to this the fact that it was shot with IMAX in mind and this is truly, like Nolan described it himself, "virtual reality without the goggles."  In terms of structure and storytelling, this is without a doubt Nolan's most barebones film to date. Divided into three intersecting parts, land, sea and air, we follow the efforts of the British soldiers, the RAF and the sailors as they struggle to evacuate the beaches of Dunkirk with th