Through a Glass Darkly: on Under the Skin
It begins with a pinprick of light amidst the darkness of the unfeeling void. The coronas of some unidentified astral flare begin to converge; aligning, by way of a Kubrickian orchestra of motion and sound…
Natural Frequency: on Dog Lady
Even before there is anything discernible on the screen, Dog Lady is evidently a film with the rhythms and sounds of nature at its patient heart. Opening deep in the undergrowth, the apposite snuffling of a canine precedes our introduction to an unnamed woman (played with quiet humanity by co-director Verónica Llinás) stalking the forest with a slingshot. The level of her success is hard to ascertain, but a later scene in which she memorably knocks an abusive youth off his bike with a rock from quite a range would suggest that her aim is true.
Mixed Martial Arts: on The Grandmaster
What strange beast is this? Cantonese auteur and arthouse cinema darling Wong Kar Wai’s long-awaited martial arts epic, The Grandmaster made its first bow at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival, and still bearing the visible scars of an infamous Weinstein pruning, it finally receives a general release in the UK.
Absolute Corruption: on Welcome to New York
There’s a gloriously seething heart to Abel Ferrara’s latest feature Welcome to New York. While the city may provide the focus of the title, it is Gerard Depardieu’s protagonist — a thinly veiled rendering of the disgraced Dominique Strauss-Kahn — that is the target of this caustic takedown.
Not quite horseplay: on Of Horses and Men
Jean-Luc Godard once famously asserted that Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar was “the world in an hour and half.” On that occasion, human nature was presented courtesy of the stoic, noble gaze of that film’s eponymous donkey and the same conceit is adopted — quite literally — in the wonderfully unusual slice of life that is Of Horses and Men.