What makes a brilliant script? Is it quotable lines? Is it nuanced dialogue? Or is it just the ability to move the story along and not get in the way? When looking back through the history of screenwriting, there are plenty of iconic films based on previous work; the Writer’s Guild of America voted Casablanca …
Adapted from Boris Vian’s cult novel, commonly translated as Froth on the Daydream, Michel Gondry’s latest film is a riotous, whimsical journey with a lot more to say than initially meets the eye. The opening sequence threatens to drown you in a cavalcade of offbeat animation and special effects, including a stop motion eel, an insect-like doorbell, a TV chef who passes ingredients through the screen and a miniature man dressed up like a mouse. Gondry’s indulgence throws down the gauntlet right away – either you’re in or you’re out. Mood Indigo can be bewildering, exasperating, infuriating, but, then again, it can be utterly transportive.
Science Fiction can have a bit of an odd identity in the mainstream publics perception of cinema. Either perceived as a cult, nerdy genre that’s synonymous with Trekkies, gamers, and cosplay Stormtroopers or on the flip-side – a viable channel for overblown, hype-glossy action films, most serious sci-fi goes overlooked by the general film-loving audience. …
Warning: spoilers for The Adjustment Bureau (and all the other films discussed) follow. The Adjustment Bureau may have been marketed with the line ‘Bourne meets Inception’ (which it attributes to Total Film, though I can’t find this line in Jonathan Crocker’s review) but it’s a softer, sweeter film than that comparison suggests. And although it …
On January 25, 2007, Onion A.V. Club critic Nathan Rabin inadvertently added a phrase to the movie lexicon. One that would eventually get it’s own Wikipedia page and it’s own NPR story. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl. In his review of Elizabethtown, Rabin said the following of Kirstin Dunst’s character: “Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime example). The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family.”
25- Mulholland Dr. (2001) Directed by David Lynch Genre: Thriller / Mystery David Lynch delivers yet again with this brilliant, biting, hysterical, and haunting ode to Hollywood. A movie in which the pieces add up to much more than the whole and the solution to the mystery, once realized, is remarkably rewarding. Mulholland Dr. split …