Brooklyn Written by Nick Hornby Directed by John Crowley Ireland/UK/Canada, 2015 In 2014, writer-director James Gray’s melodrama The Immigrant captured the struggles of immigration in powerful fashion. The film made the most of a moving performance from Marion Cotillard, creating an unforgettable depiction of a woman adapting to life in America. In spite of the …
Wes Anderson’s films evoke an unusual feeling, entirely separate from any other filmmaker working today and impossible to imitate. That style is refined still further in Anderson’s newest, ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, which may well be his most mature film made to date.
More than perhaps any other director, the work of Ernst Lubitsch has been the most noticeable influence on Wes Anderson’s style. Though the great German-American writer-director, most prolific in the 1930s and 1940s, was never quite so aesthetically bold in the look of his sets, he too was preoccupied with meticulous staging for comedy within his chosen locales, be they the titular Shop Around the Corner or the Parisian hotel of Ninotchka; The Grand Budapest Hotel is set in a fictional European country, the Republic of Zubrowka, another Lubitsch trait from works like The Merry Widow and The Love Parade, though The Shop Around the Corner happens to be set in the city Anderson’s mountaintop lodging house takes its name from. He garnered the descriptor of ‘the Lubitsch touch’ thanks to the moving sincerity that always made itself evident within even his more broad comedic premises, and Anderson’s own best work is that in which a recognisable humanism always makes itself known and potent even within the stylised stiltedness through which most of his characters are written and performed.
The Host Directed by Andrew Niccol Written by Andrew Niccol USA, 2013 World-building is key in storytelling, but no more impactful than in the science-fiction genre, where authors literally introduce us to new universes, brand-new places for characters to exist and grapple with conflict. Andrew Niccol, writer of Gattaca and The Truman Show, is no …
Byzantium Written by Moira Buffini Directed by Neil Jordan UK/USA/Ireland, 2012 Two female vampires holed up in a seaside town hotel; for certain savvy viewers, this distilled description of Byzantium’s premise may bring to mind Harry Kümel’s strange and sensual film Daughters of Darkness from 1971. Neil Jordan’s return to both horror and the bloodsucking …
Very recently, Peter Jackson just released his casting for ‘The Hobbit,’ the film that has wavered in and out of production Hell. Currently, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Rob Kazinsky, Aidan Turner, Graham McTavish, John Callen, Stephen Hunter, Mark Hadlow and Peter Hambleton will all be galavanting through Middle Earth on one of the greatest adventures …
Tragically, there’s ample evidence onscreen of Jackson’s love for the material, but he brings to the table none of the qualities that made Creatures – another drama surrounding pubescent girls and grisly acts – such a startling breakthrough. The Lovely Bones Directed by Peter Jackson At this point, Peter Jackson probably isn’t the sort of …