Reviews of the Bosch

Fascism, and Nazism especially, cannot withstand ridicule. It’s such an extreme and brittle ideology in terms of its fundamental tenets, and that’s why fascist powers throughout history have censored and silenced criticism, why their leaders have been so thin-skinned and their systemic reinforcement and indoctrination of their philosophy so severe. Even the most illogical assumptions and grandiloquent theatrical practices must be upheld and respected with total seriousness, otherwise the strength of its grip falls apart. And it’s why those who made anti-fascist satires during the war years, Charlie Chaplin with Th e Great Dictator , Ernst Lubitsch with To Be or Not To Be , were genuine heroes for exposing and mocking all the grandiosity of the Third Reich. Taika Waititi is far from the only filmmaker after to satirize Nazi Germany; but he might be the best at it since Mel Brooks lambasted the aesthetics and character of that tyrannical politic through “Springtime for Hitler” in ...

Nobody makes movies like Bong Joon-ho and Bong Joon-ho’s movies are unlike anything else in cinema. His genre-eclectic style, darkly comic sensibility, and relentlessly sharp social commentary has made him one of the most unique figures in world cinema, finally recognized for his keen artistry and exemplary voice by Cannes this summer when they awarded him the Palme d’Or for his latest feature Parasite –a film highly deserving of the accolade. It’s Bong at his fiercest, his most relevant, and his most artistically adept as he ruthlessly skewers wealth disparity and class politics in the modern age. Much like Bong’s masterful Snowpiercer , the major theme of Parasite isn’t subtle. The opening scenes introduce us to the Kim family living in a squalid basement apartment each folding pizza boxes for a living in circumstances so dreary and desperate they keep at it even while their home is being gassed with insecticide to meet their quota. They piggy-back off an extremely volatile ...

As famous as Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror film The Shining is Stephen King’s dislike for it. In adapting King’s 1977 story of the caretaker of a haunted hotel being driven mad, Kubrick nixed much of the novelists’ deep character development and important themes in favour of creating an enigmatic atmosphere, a dreadful tone, and a rich series of some of the scariest moments and imagery the cinematic horror genre has produced; relegating the actual story as secondary. To invoke a deceased caretaker, King sought to “correct” the film, by doing all he could to remind people he didn’t approve, producing a forgettable TV miniseries in 1997, and publishing his own sequel in 2013. That Doctor Sleep has made its own way to the big screen now is astonishing. Surely King knew that the cultural capital of the film would override any interest in Warner Brothers making a purely book-loyal sequel, and that when push comes to shove, the movie would have precedence as a source material. Tha...

Part of the joy of the Criterion Channel is that it gives its subscribers the opportunity to see the sorts of films from filmmakers and cultures they never would have thought of before. I’ve never seen a movie from Iran, but Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up was right there. It’s a strange anomaly of a film that’s part documentary part biographical fiction, but with the people involved in the real life story playing themselves –something which is especially fascinating given it’s the story of a con. In 1990, a poor movie fan Hossain Sabzian impersonated famed director Mohsen Makhmalbaf to a wealthy family believing they were cast in his new film, up to and including rehearsing with one of the sons and claiming to use their home as a location shoot. Most interestingly though is that Sabzian appeared to have no further criminal interest in his scam, not intending to rob or harm them, and was merely a passionate cinephile taking advantage of a kind of respect and admiration he never got i...

“Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same Year after year, through all the silent night Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame, Shines on that inextinguishable light! The sea-bird wheeling round it, with the din Of wings and winds and solitary cries, Blinded and maddened by the light within, Dashes himself against the glare, and dies.” -Henry W. Longfellow, “The Lighthouse” Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse is that rare movie that truly earns the label ‘psychological horror’.  Its’ terrors are deep and primal, simultaneously fascinated and horrified by the human mind and where it goes under pressure. Pluming the recesses of obsession, aggression, anxiety, sexuality, and desperation, the film has you perceiving the world from a mind’s eye clouded by madness, as turbulent and unpredictable as the tempest that rains down on this desolate rock off the coast of New England. Nothing is reliable. Everything is relevant. It’s a movie about cabin fever, possibly. While the iso...

       In a 2017 interview with the Guardian , director James Cameron criticized Wonder Woman by calling its title character “an objectified icon”, comparing her unfavourably to his own famous heroines. “Sarah Connor was not a beauty icon. She was strong, she was troubled, she was a terrible mother, and she earned the respect of the audience through pure grit.” [1] Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins subsequently responded by pointing out, “if women have to always be hard, tough, and troubled to be strong, and we aren’t free to be multidimensional or celebrate an icon of women everywhere because she is attractive and loving, then we haven’t come very far.” [2] Camerons’ logic that a powerful woman character has to be troubled and tough, that she can’t be sexy (an insult to Linda Hamilton I think) speaks to a pervading problem in how male film culture perceives strong women. In order for a heroic woman to have value, she must be imbued with masculine t...