For a performer whose career was so short-lived, Janis Joplin has been hugely influential and such a largely contentious figure in the world of music. We’ve recently gotten a Jimi Hendrix biopic, along with music stories about everyone from the short lived (Ian Curtis, Jim Morrison, John Lennon) to the long-living legends (Johnny Cash, Ray …
Martha Marcy May Marlene Directed by Sean Durkin Written by Sean Durkin USA, 2012 The fractured nature of Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene is eerily reminiscent of the same tactics used by Derek Cianfrance in his 2010 film Blue Valentine. This film relies less on the novel like structure of the aforementioned film, as it effortlessly invites the …
Martha Marcy May Marlene Directed by Sean Durkin Screenplay by Sean Durkin 2011, USA Winner of the Best Dramatic Direction award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Martha Marcy May Marlene is a clever, creepy and extremely striking reflection on the duplicitous way cults instill their beliefs when feeding on the psychological vulnerabilities of their …
When we talk about modernism in cinema, we are talking about filmmaking that acknowledges the medium as part of the storytelling, a melding of form and content so that the images on screen portray not just actions but interior psychology and moral quandaries. Keeping that in mind, it is hard to deny that the Dardenne …
Martha Marcy May Marlene Directed by Sean Durkin Written by Sean Durkin Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy, John Hawkes Even from its title the film Martha Marcy May Marlene suggests a fracture of psyche, a yearning for identity that provokes a young woman’s hypnosis and subsequent evasion of a sinister cult in the …