Richie Mehta's Siddharth has been the film that I have admired the most in an overall lackluster 2014. So when I found out that he wrote and directed I'll Follow You Down, a sci-fi drama with many similar themes as its less commercial counterpart, I was anxious to see it.
There are more movies each year and hence the need for stories has never been greater. Technological advances have helped create special effects that would appear to make our imaginations the only limit to what could appear on screen. It's probably the case that no novel is truly unfilmable, so Hollywood may get to these eventually. I'm just not holding my breath.
I am about to recommend a four hour movie--a three episode television miniseries, actually--in Czech, about a dissident student who sets himself on fire to protest the occupation of his country by the Soviet Union.
Film critics don't talk about acting much these days. Have they ever?
Back after a hiatus, Ken and Todd discuss Doug Liman's sci-fi film, The Edge of Tomorrow. Why is the way violence is represented in the film particularly disturbing? Are we intended to laugh at it? And why does Todd say the movie reminded him of watching someone play a video game?
Think for a moment. How interesting is it that the Iliad is one of the most famous and inspiring stories in the history of the world? (As legend has it, Alexander the Great always kept copy of the Iliad under his pillow.) I bet this seems strange to many of us now, living with our modern ideas of morality, with our culture’s sensitivity to individual “natural rights,” with our entertainment’s cardboard cutout characters who are designed to be identified with, sympathized with, copied, emulated, worshipped, cheered for, etc. It is quite true that the Iliad does not possess our modern sensibilities, whether in politics or in entertainment.
The film strives so hard to model its subject that its practically not there.
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The setting of Manuscripts Don't Burn may be painstakingly specific, but its themes are broad, perhaps even universal. How much are we willing to risk, to sacrifice, for freedom of speech? Why does one act of violence seemingly begin a never ending chain?
For now, I'll will just say that my defense of 22 Jump Street is nearly identical to my defense of Moms' Night Out. You can make a list as long as my arm of things wrong with the movie, and I won't disagree. But I laughed.
