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Author Archives: Ross Birks
The Passenger (1975)
A purgatorial dirge for a character who is not dead, but choses to be regarded as such. The last major Antonioni I had to check off and a remarkably spare contemplation on life’s dead ends. Feels like a desolate funeral … Continue reading
Posted in Reviews
Tagged 1975, Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider, Michelangelo Antonioni
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Trash Humpers (2009)
Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers is a calculated annoyance. Seemingly amateur in presentation, juvenile and crude in its humour and utterly headache-inducing in its aesthetics (the hazy image combined with a soundtrack built almost exclusively from a cacophony of screeching voices and madcap … Continue reading
Gentlemen Broncos (2009)
Extremely un-deserving of the critical battering it received and its subsequent reputation as a major turkey, Gentlemen Broncos is an inventive, unique and meticulously designed comedy. Jared Hess and co-writer/wife Jerusha, find laughs and sweetness in various un-expected places and materials. The … Continue reading
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Tagged 2009, Jared Hess, Jennifer Coolidge, Jermaine Clement, Michael Angarano, Sam Rockwell
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Alice Sweet Alice (1976)
Quite a complex horror-drama masquerading as an ugly slasher joint. Some impressive performances from the young actresses (including a nine year old Brooke Shields) who are thrown into a lot of distressing and uncomfortable sequences. The heavy presence of Catholic … Continue reading
Stigmata (1999)
I always remember this haunting the shelves of video shops alongside End of Days at the turn of the millennium so there was certainly a twinge of VHS nostalgia pulsing through my veins upon hitting play. Stigmata is a stimulating visual experience, though dated … Continue reading
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Tagged 1999, Billy Corgan, Gabriel Byrne, Jonathan Pryce, Patricia Arquette, Rupert Wainwright
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The Master (2012)
“You can’t take this life straight can you?” This time around (my fifth? sixth?) I really latched onto the movie as a rumination on performance and specifically its contrasting of acting styles. Phoenix represents the angry, visceral, tormented style birthed in … Continue reading
Posted in Reviews, Rewatch
Tagged 2012, amy adams, Joaquin Phoenix, Laura Dern, Paul Thomas Anderson, Philip Seymour Hoffman
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Art History (2011)
Art History feels like a companion piece to Swanberg’s similarly themed The Zone in the way it zeroes in on the conversations and behaviours that occur around shooting sex scenes. This one is more thickly veiled though, as Swanberg and his actors seem … Continue reading
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
A muscular procedural thoroughly heightened by McTiernan’s piercing, prowling sense of space as well as Jan de Bont’s remarkable skills with light and shadow. The chess-like plotting and limited locations threaten to become tedious at several points making the film … Continue reading
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Tagged 1990, Alex Baldwin, Jan de Bont, John McTiernan, Sam Neill, Scott Glenn
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Le amiche (1955)
Antonioni throws us into the eye of the storm, within a circle of love addicts personified by a clique of cruel women. When one of them tries to commit suicide to cure her broken heart, it is outsider Clelia (Eleonora … Continue reading
Privacy Setting (2013)
This starts off like some awful student horror film about a voyeuristic creep, full of student film tics and non-flourishes. Then it takes a turn and becomes something else, something more playful and less insidious and a lot of the … Continue reading
"This Film Should Be Played Loud" 