REVIEW: San Andreas [2015]

“Played a little tug-of-war with a car” Can you call a movie a disaster flick without the President of the United States declaring a state of emergency? While I ask in jest, we do expect such a sobering announcement to arrive with music soaring and heroic platitudes raining down. It never comes here, though, and its absence might be the best thing about San Andreas since it means the chaos inflicted on poor unsuspecting pixels pretending to be Californian cities doesn’t spread internationally. The shockwaves of this cataclysmic event surely…

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REVIEW: 20,000 Days on Earth [2014]

“And if that doesn’t do it—you shoot the clown” I must have been nineteen or twenty when I was first introduced to Nick Cave‘s music. As a college kid trying to broaden my horizons cinematically with “classics” from foreign auteurs, I popped in Wim Wenders‘ Wings of Desire for reasons I no longer recall. While a brilliant film regardless, I could not shake the violence in Cave’s stage presence or the intensity of his songs against the romantic plot thrusting my ears into its wake. So even though I knew…

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REVIEW: Holy Motors [2012]

“Too bad. I miss forests.” Is it science fiction, fantasy, drama, comedy, all or none of the above? As spoken by a character from within, beauty exists in the eye of the beholder and so does the importance of Leos Carax‘s Holy Motors. However, rather than positing the question of what happens when there no longer is a beholder, I wonder if the film actually waxes poetic on the truth that we are quickly becoming beholden to everything. Through enhancing technology and a flattening of the world, we have the…

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