psychological
In the next of our Take Two series, we tackle Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky, which may not be quite as remarkable as initially remembered.
In this beginner’s guide, we explore Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s journey from psychological indies to mainstream blockbusters.
I first discovered Jeff Nichols back in 2013, when I happened to catch Mud in theaters. Not knowing what to expect, I still remember distinctly how I felt walking out of the theater – I absolutely loved everything about the film. I was stunned by its raw, understated beauty, with characters that lived and breathed, and a coming-of-age story that was uniquely captivating.
Be My Cat is a satirical found footage film that manages to poke at the superficial ideologies of filmmaking while also being entertaining.
Nocturnal Animals is Tom Ford’s latest film, presented in lavish and bright neon colors; though it also possesses a hopelessly dark view.
The idea of the “secret sequel” seems to be a new marketing scheme in horror cinema as of late. Earlier this year, a sequel to the film Cloverfield came out, called 10 Cloverfield Lane, yet nobody knew it was a sequel until a couple months before its premiere. In similar fashion, Blair Witch, the sequel to 1999’s seminal horror The Blair Witch Project, was originally filmed under the fake title “The Woods” so as to hide its true intentions.
When I sat down to watch Observance, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It opened with a rather artsy tone, as waves crashed against rocky cliffs, all in black and white. After a minute or so of this, the film cuts to Tenneal (Stephanie King) walking through the streets on her way home.
There is offense to be taken with the frame and exterior of physical bodies. Beauty, it has been said, is in the eye of the beholder. Yet, one can’t help but feel that, since the rise of feminism and the development of the male-gaze interpretation, almost all appreciation for the aesthetics of a given film has been entirely lost.
The story of Freckles, written and directed by Denise Papas Meechan, opens with Lizzie introducing herself by voicing her strong hatred she has for the “ugly orange dots” that she refers to as her “star map to loneliness”. This is a story of a woman who has a disturbingly distorted view of herself. Despite her mother telling her that the freckles are “kisses from God”, Lizzie sees them as a curse.
Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr), the new governess for two orphaned children in Victorian England, arrives at their idyllic country estate in the beginning of the psychological horror film, The Innocents (1961). The naive young woman, who has a lived a solidly middle class existence as a vicar’s daughter, marvels at the stately home and spacious grounds. Everything, including her two young charges, seems innocent and perfect.
