-- a selection of short-form reviews of the films I have watched this week --
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (dir. Alex Gibney, 2015)
✭✭✭✭✩
Hollywood dreams are toppled on their back in Alex Gibney’s incredible expose, Going Clear, adapted from Lawrence Wright’s book of the same name. Scientology is the subject, here, its history traced across a selection of ex-members – figures such as Paul Haggis, Mark Rathbun, Mike Rinder and Sylvia “Spanky” Taylor – former Scientologists whose lives were indelibly touched by its sustained campaign of wrath and exploitation. Gibney looks to Errol Morris for certain, stylised sequences – the dramatization of cleaning of a toilet, a unique example – whilst collaging interviews, radio and television from individuals such as Travolta to Cruise (both of whom declined to be interviewed in the present). Even if, as the church has since defamed, it is as valid at the 2014 “Rape on Campus” article, it is an objectively horrific tale of cult madness and its perpetuation into the modern day, the film possessing a spellbound intensity as its narrative unfolds.
Hollywood dreams are toppled on their back in Alex Gibney’s incredible expose, Going Clear, adapted from Lawrence Wright’s book of the same name. Scientology is the subject, here, its history traced across a selection of ex-members – figures such as Paul Haggis, Mark Rathbun, Mike Rinder and Sylvia “Spanky” Taylor – former Scientologists whose lives were indelibly touched by its sustained campaign of wrath and exploitation. Gibney looks to Errol Morris for certain, stylised sequences – the dramatization of cleaning of a toilet, a unique example – whilst collaging interviews, radio and television from individuals such as Travolta to Cruise (both of whom declined to be interviewed in the present). Even if, as the church has since defamed, it is as valid at the 2014 “Rape on Campus” article, it is an objectively horrific tale of cult madness and its perpetuation into the modern day, the film possessing a spellbound intensity as its narrative unfolds.
Tristana (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1970)
✭✭✭✭✩
Tristana is gorgeous, confident filmmaking – a beautiful, adopted woman (Catherine Deneuve) discovers her voice whilst vexed by the pursuits of her benefactor, Don Lope – with an ending that left me completely uneased. Powers switch hands as dream-like images play out, with subconscious desires witnessed in the smallest of moments. Indomitable.
Tristana is gorgeous, confident filmmaking – a beautiful, adopted woman (Catherine Deneuve) discovers her voice whilst vexed by the pursuits of her benefactor, Don Lope – with an ending that left me completely uneased. Powers switch hands as dream-like images play out, with subconscious desires witnessed in the smallest of moments. Indomitable.
The Myth of the American Sleepover (dir. David Robert Mitchell, 2010)
✭✭✭✩✩
Unusual, unhappy-go-lucky adolescents move across the American landscape of David Robert Mitchell’s tender, debut feature. Sleepovers – a wonderful metonym for that which passes you by, unnoticed – are drifted between, interrupted or abandoned throughout, spaces of community that (for the purposes of the film, moreover) illustrate the figures who are searching for more, beyond the bedroom playground. Mitchell’s film is not original, but nor does it claim to be – not dissimilar to the spine of George Lucas’ iconic American Graffiti, love is laboured for, and lost, with adventure held in the exotic chimeras of staying up too late, nocturnal antics, or drinking alcohol with friends in the rain. It is troubling that so much of what ruined Under the Silver Lake – the latest feature from the director – is foreshadowed here, women yet again subject to a peeping-tom, voyeuristic camera, sunny smiles almost always leading to some form of unclothing. It is hard not to find pieces of nostalgic wonder scattered throughout, even if the whole is weaker than the sum of its parts.
Unusual, unhappy-go-lucky adolescents move across the American landscape of David Robert Mitchell’s tender, debut feature. Sleepovers – a wonderful metonym for that which passes you by, unnoticed – are drifted between, interrupted or abandoned throughout, spaces of community that (for the purposes of the film, moreover) illustrate the figures who are searching for more, beyond the bedroom playground. Mitchell’s film is not original, but nor does it claim to be – not dissimilar to the spine of George Lucas’ iconic American Graffiti, love is laboured for, and lost, with adventure held in the exotic chimeras of staying up too late, nocturnal antics, or drinking alcohol with friends in the rain. It is troubling that so much of what ruined Under the Silver Lake – the latest feature from the director – is foreshadowed here, women yet again subject to a peeping-tom, voyeuristic camera, sunny smiles almost always leading to some form of unclothing. It is hard not to find pieces of nostalgic wonder scattered throughout, even if the whole is weaker than the sum of its parts.
Easy A (dir. Will Gluck, 2010)
✭✭✩✩✩
Gluck’s Californian restaging of Nathaniel Hawthorn’s puritan-set novel, The Scarlet-Letter A Romance, is far more entertaining than its 1973 adaptation by Wim Wenders, but its comedic foundation is neither funny (maybe a little) or that original. Emma Stones shines, of course, quipped with wonderful phrases – ‘Are you really that repulsed by lady parts? What do you think I have down there? A gnome?’ – that trickle into her fantastic mania of Birdman and The Favourite. It is brash and bold, but it doesn’t really do anything that interesting or go anywhere that new.
Gluck’s Californian restaging of Nathaniel Hawthorn’s puritan-set novel, The Scarlet-Letter A Romance, is far more entertaining than its 1973 adaptation by Wim Wenders, but its comedic foundation is neither funny (maybe a little) or that original. Emma Stones shines, of course, quipped with wonderful phrases – ‘Are you really that repulsed by lady parts? What do you think I have down there? A gnome?’ – that trickle into her fantastic mania of Birdman and The Favourite. It is brash and bold, but it doesn’t really do anything that interesting or go anywhere that new.
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