Monthly Archives: September 2020

Film, Reviews, VODzilla.co

Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas, 2012)

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The French title of Olivier Assayas’ 2012 film, Après mai, translates as “After May”, referring to the famous uprisings in the country during May of 1968. It was a period of revolutionary zeal that is also evoked by the film’s UK title, if one recalls the lyrics of Thunderclap Newman’s 1969 hit single Something in the Air: “We’ve got to get together sooner or later, because the revolution’s here.”

Assayas is no stranger to the revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s himself, and Something in the Air is semi-autobiographical. Rather than providing a historical exposé of the revolutionary ideals of the time, the film is instead a coming-of-age narrative set against that backdrop of demonstrations and fervour; it is more in line with a film like Dazed and Confused (1993) than any overtly politically charged work…

Full review for VODzilla.co

Film, Reviews, VODzilla.co

Tesla (Michael Almereyda, 2020)

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Since breaking through as a writer-director in the 1990s, with oddities such as 1994’s post-modern vampire tale Nadja, Michael Almereyda has remained one of American independent cinema’s most unpredictable creative forces. What is consistent among his recent fiction efforts – he also dabbles in documentary – is playfulness when it comes to genre or adaptation, such as in housebound sci-fi Marjorie Prime or his 2000 take on Hamlet. The latter saw Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark become the son of the newly dead CEO of Denmark Corporation in New York City, with Ethan Hawke delivering the key “to be or not to be” speech in a Blockbuster Video store.

Hamlet leads Hawke and Kyle MacLachlan reunite with Almereyda for Tesla, a freewheeling biopic of inventor Nikola Tesla (Hawke) that focuses on his antagonistic interactions with Thomas Edison (MacLachlan); his scientific developments concerning the transmission of electrical power and light; his business matters with entrepreneur George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan); and his relationship of sorts with philanthropist Anne (Eve Hewson), daughter of dominant American financier JP Morgan (Donnie Keshawarz). Some of this narrative territory was also explored in Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s recent The Current War, in which Nicholas Hoult, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen played Tesla, Edison, Westinghouse and Morgan, respectively. But two more different takes on ostensibly similar material you are unlikely to find…

Full review for VODzilla.co

Film, Reviews, VODzilla.co

Barking Dogs Never Bite (Bong Joon Ho, 2000)

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South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho has previously said in interviews that he considers his 2003 sophomore breakout Memories of Murder to be something akin to his “true” debut feature. Whether or not that has anything to do with his actual debut feature, Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), underperforming financially in its home nation – and only belatedly being distributed in many international territories – is a question only the man himself, or possibly a therapist, can answer. In the US, distribution rights were only finally acquired in the summer of 2009, around the time when Bong’s Mother received rave reviews at Cannes. In the UK, Barking Dogs Never Bite played at the London Film Festival in 2000 but has otherwise never had an official release until now, a time when Bong’s star has never been higher after Parasite’s game-changing Oscars haul and global box office success…

Full review for VODzilla.co

Film, Reviews, VODzilla.co

Monsieur Lazhar (Philippe Falardeau, 2011)

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Monsieur Lazhar was Canada’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars ceremony of 2012, making it to the final five nominees but losing to Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation. On a surface level, that Monsieur Lazhar concerns a new teacher changing the perceptions and lives of a group of students may make it seem like an ideal, easy target to which the Academy might take a shine. Philippe Falardeau’s film, though, is a much different – and better – beast…

Full review for VODzilla.co’s MUBI Mondays column

Film, Interviews, SciFiNow

Koko-di Koko-da: Don’t Loop Now

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Fans of grim but strangely uplifting films but who also happen to love Groundhog Day, will have a new horror fable to prioritise in 2020 with Koko-di Koko-da.

This second feature from Swedish director Johannes Nyholm really does do something inventive – and frequently disturbing – with a time loop storytelling device.

Koko-di Koko-da follows a grieving married couple taking a holiday, stopping off in the woods on the way to camp for the night, only for their tent to come under siege from a group of figures straight out of the circus of your nightmares. We talk to Nyholm about his film…

Full interview for SciFiNow

Film, Reviews, SciFiNow

Koko-di Koko-da (Johannes Nyholm, 2019)

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On a day out in Denmark just before her eighth birthday, young Maja (Katarina Jakobson) tells her parents, Elin (Ylva Gallon) and Tobias (Leif Edlund), that she wishes the day could last forever. The day will end up playing in her parents’ minds in perpetuity, though not for the reasons that the happy child intends.

And in Swedish writer-director Johannes Nyholm’s Koko-di Koko-da, a literal never-ending quality will take effect for another dreadful day in the aftermath…

Full review for SciFiNow

Film, Little White Lies, Reviews

Isadora’s Children (Damien Manivel, 2019)

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Among the most influential figures in dance of the 20th century, Isadora Duncan faced a horrible tragedy in 1913 when her infant children both drowned while in the care of their nanny as their runaway car plunged into the Seine. During her grieving process, Duncan choreographed a three-part piece called ‘Mother’ as a means to express her heartbreak.

Written and directed by former dancer and acrobat Damien Manivel (who won the Best Director prize at Locarno in 2019), the delicate and deliberately-paced Isadora’s Children is cut into three distinct parts, each exploring how the lives of three sets of women – all of different ages and backgrounds – are touched by ‘Mother’…

Full review for Little White Lies

Film, Interviews, SciFiNow

Mulan: Made of Honour

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It’s early January 2020 and SciFiNow is among what’s apparently the first audience to see select full scenes from one of the year’s most intriguing blockbuster prospects. We’re very impressed by the thrilling scale and tender, moving intimacy of the wildly different sequences we’re shown. And this is somewhat surprising because this film is one of those oft-dreaded propositions: a remake.

Well, yes and no to it being a strict remake of another movie. Disney’s new Mulan is definitely a live-action update of its own animated film from 1998, but the character of Hua Mulan originates in a famous story first told over 1,500 years ago, in which a young woman, disguised as a man, took her aging father’s place in the army. In paying tribute to various versions of the story, as well as the character’s importance for Chinese audiences, the new Mulan is a very different beast from its Disney predecessor…

Full interview for SciFiNow