Reviews of the Bosch

“Don’t speak to the people below, because they’re below. The people above won’t answer you, because they’re above obviously.” This is what elderly prisoner Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor) tells Goreng (Iván Massagué) when he awakens in the same cell within an undisclosed building housing hundreds of floors with a single rectangular opening cut out of both the floor and ceiling through which a platform descends daily bearing the leftovers of the food from above. On a monthly basis, the interred will be removed to different levels, nobody truly knowing how many there are, only that the further from the top the greater the inevitability of starvation; and food cannot be kept, otherwise cells are heated or cooled to fatal degrees. In spite of this, Trimagasi has come to accept the system. After he urinates on the food of the complaining people one level down, Goreng notes next month they may be above them. “Yes,” says Trimagasi. “And they’ll piss on us, the bastards.” The Platform ...

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg  might be the first French New Wave film I’ve seen that is legitimately uplifting. I mean it’s ultimately not a happy movie (though neither a sad one), it’s story being that of a failed long-distance relationship, but it’s so far from the ennui and cynicism that often seems to pervade the movies of writer-director Jacques Demy’s contemporaries, Truffault or Goddard. This is a rich and visually jovial film shot in glorious technicolour against marvellous set decoration and lighting techniques clearly inspired by, yet eclipsing the style of classical Hollywood musicals. To be inspired by Hollywood it seems was something of a taboo in European cinema at the time, where fewer artistic and corporate limitations meant greater intellectual freedom that the auteur movement delighted in taking advantage of. But Demy seems to have taken pride in borrowing American aesthetics, yet filtering them distinctly through a heightened look and atmosphere and a narrat...

It’s over, isn’t it? Every generation has one kids’ show that changes everything for the medium going forward. Gen-X had Batman: The Animated Series , which proved cartoons could be serious and psychologically and narratively complex. We Millennials had Avatar: The Last Airbender , which demonstrated that cartoons could build an intricate mythos and that even child characters could undergo rich and compelling development. And Gen-Z had Steven Universe , which not only built on each of the aforementioned testaments, but did so in the service of themes and a level of emotional maturity rarely found in childrens’ entertainment. That it spoke explicitly to the marginalized and translated concepts and feelings never before seen in kids’ animation should not be discounted by any means either. And so it’s a great shame that Steven Universe  has ended, the beloved brainchild of animator-writer-producer extraordinaire Rebecca Sugar, who somehow has six seasons of a hit show un...

I’ve never been fully aboard the Meryl Streep hype train. I’ve always felt she’s a really good actress of course, but her reputation as the greatest of her generation and one of the most important stars in Hollywood always felt a bit disingenuous at best, industry mandated at worst. I mean she’s an Academy darling, holding the record for the most nominations (21) of any actor by quite a lot, many of which even her most ardent admirers would admit were mere tokens. I’m not a fan of her kind of celebrity royalty and I just haven’t really been blown away by most of her performances that I’ve seen during my lifetime. But therein lies the rub, and I realize I actually haven’t seen much of her work of the 70s and 80s (or granted, The Devil Wears Prada for that matter), which is where the icon of Meryl Streep was born: the deeply committed, accent variant, self-challenging and arguably Oscar pursuant actress who was in fairly short order elevated to the esteem of Katherine Hepburn and ...

I Lost My Body  is yet another reminder that the most intrepid work in feature animation is being done outside of Hollywood; a deliriously attractive film that has no place amid the usual fodder turned out by studio animation divisions in the United States. It’s a French film, and France has a history of producing exquisitely unique animation from  The Triplets of Belleville , Ernest & Celestine , My Life as a Courgette ,  The Little Prince , Persepolis , Nocturna , and Long Way North , to of course the outright classics of Fantastic Planet  and Kirikou and the Sorceress . I Lost My Body  firmly joins their ranks, not only for its mesmerizing visuals and eccentric creativity, but because of its soulfulness, its tender exploration of loneliness and loss. Yet it’s a bit of a gruesome movie, more than most audiences are used to from animation at least, one half of its story following a disembodied hand escaping a lab and travelling the suburbs of Paris i...

With COVID-19 being the only thing on anyones’ mind as it continues to spread and dominate every facet of life, its’ a relief to have a means of distraction in art and entertainment; and as much as I worry it’ll kill the theatre industry when this is all over, streaming is really a blessing during this time. There are so many options to turn to and so much content to occupy our thoughts and attentions that they can really make our home-bound existence more bearable. Most importantly, new stuff is still dropping there (though this too is impermanent). For my interests though, I first decided to check out the new Brett Haley movie on Netflix, All the Bright Places , based on the book by Jennifer Niven, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Liz Hannah. His follow-up to the astoundingly endearing Hearts Beat Loud , it’s a teenage romance set in Indiana about two kids starting a relationship as they each battle mental illness, that seems to be aiming to be something resembling a John...

I, like everyone, have been thinking a lot about Coronavirus lately. The scope of its contagion and relative mortality rate sure, but likewise its’ social effects, economic effects, and probably most of all, cultural effects have me terribly concerned. Everything is at a seeming standstill; major events worldwide have been cancelled or postponed, as have numerous movies and film productions. No one of my generation has lived through a pandemic of this scale before, it’s terrifying and disheartening. A twenty-first century plague that we have little frame of reference for.  It was appropriate then, or possibly ominous, that just as the severity of this breakout became known, within a day of the first case being identified in my province, my latest order from the Criterion Collection arrived: including among a few other titles, The Seventh Seal –a movie set during the greatest plague of western history. That this would roughly coincide with the death of its star an...