Is Warfare the most realistic war film ever made?

-
In Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s brutal and immersive new film, memory informs the events that take place in real time to a unit of soldiers in Iraq Warfare , Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s assiduous new film on a single episode of the American war in Iraq, opens with a title card typical to a war picture: date, location, barebones summary – 11 November 2006, in Ramadi, Iraq. Navy SEAL team alpha one is supporting Marines in insurgents’ territory. And then one final, unusual detail in place of the standard “based on a true story” – “This film uses only their memories.” The “only” is an ominous indicator: this is a film working against the Hollywood tide to gloss, simplify or narrativize. Warfare, based primarily on Mendoza’s memories of that day as a former SEAL, as well as those of fellow soldiers and civilians present, is as much an experiment of translation as a cinematic achievement, a movie defined by both what it shows and what it does not. Much of the press surrounding Warfar...
Post a Comment

Janet Planet review – Annie Baker’s tender, perceptive mother-daughter drama

-

Julianne Nicholson and newcomer Zoe Ziegler are a dream team in the Pulitzer prize-winning US playwright’s richly cinematic film debut

Janet (Julianne Nicholson) is the whole world for her only child, 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler). Bespectacled, gauche and still partially unformed as a human, Lacy is fascinated by her casually magnetic mother, examining her hungrily and attempting to read her as if she’s a map to navigate the mysteries of the adult world. It’s an intense relationship, poised on the brink of change, with Lacy’s adolescence lurking just around the corner.

But it’s this sense of precious transience that makes Janet Planet, the feature debut of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker, such an exquisite and treasurable account of a complicated mother-daughter bond. It’s a moment caught in the amber light of an endless summer in rural western Massachusetts. And if by the film’s close Lacy is starting to see her mother differently, she’s still not ready to loosen her clinging grasp on Janet, whose hand she holds when she can’t sleep, and whose hair she keeps as a protective talisman.

Continue reading...

from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/dl43iaz
via IFTTT

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BREAKING: Interstellar back in cinemas due to public demand; Dune: Part Two to also re-release on March 14 in IMAX

-
A lot of Bollywood films have re-released off late but when it comes to Hollywood, a handful of classics have had a re-run in cinemas. Last month, Interstellar re-released and received a rocking response. However, it just had a one-week run. If you missed watching the cult film in cinemas, here’s a reason for you to rejoice. The film will be back on the big screen on March 14, that too in IMAX. Moreover, Warner Bros will also bring back Dune: Part Two on the same day in theatres. A source told Bollywood Hungama, “Interstellar has a huge demand as it’s a film worth watching in theatres, that too IMAX. However, it re-released on February 7 and had to discontinued from February 14 to accommodate the new releases, Chhaava and Captain America: Brand New World. Both these films got a release in IMAX as well.” The source continued, “Many were aware that Interstellar had just a one week run. Hence, it held very well in the weekdays, collecting Rs. 2 crore plus. Yet, there was a section of mo...
Read more

‘I lied to get the part’: Melvyn Hayes on his ‘angry young man’ beginnings – and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum

-
He was tipped to be the next Richard Burton – but ended up as crossdressing Gunner Gloria in the now controversial sitcom. As his breakthrough classic returns to the screen, Hayes looks back One day in 1957, Melvyn Hayes was on the set of a film called Woman in a Dressing Gown when a man sat down next to him. “I was getting paid £5 a day and I’d been on location for three days,” the actor recalls. “All I had to do was walk up to a house and put a newspaper through a letterbox. That was my part. Finished. I said to this bloke, ‘I can’t believe the waste of money on this film. Take me. You could have got a newspaper boy on £1 a day to do what I’m doing.’ Then I said, ‘What do you do then, you lazy bugger?’ And he said, ‘I’m the producer.’” Hayes, now 89, giggles at the memory of the cheek of himself at 23. Back then, £5 a day was a decent whack. His first job in showbiz, in the early 1950s, was as assistant to The Great Masoni, a magician who tasked Hayes with “disappearing twice daily...
Read more

The Portable Door review – Harry Potter-ish YA fantasy carried by hardworking cast

-
Jeffrey Walker’s adaptation of the young-adult fantasy novel retains its edge thanks to its performances, but gets stuck on the whole door thing Adapted from Tom Holt’s 2003 young-adult fantasy novel, this is a passable attempt at kickstarting a new Harry Potter-style franchise set in a fusty-quirky institution, dosed up with extra Gilliamesque grotesquery. Co-produced by the Jim Henson Company, the production design is poky and intense, and the cast – with Christoph Waltz and Sam Neill larking it up – give it their all. But amid all this clutter, it sometimes has trouble moving its story forward. The Portable Door has a nice conceit: the venerable London corporation of JW Wells & Co is responsible for engineering all the daily incidents of coincidence and serendipity that happen in urban life. Not that wet-behind-the-ears intern Paul Carpenter (Patrick Gibson), desperate for any gig, knows the company’s raison d’etre when he signs up. He appears to have no discernible talents wh...
Read more