My final brief look at one-off science fiction projects by mainstream filmmakers deals with three films which conjure up alternate worlds (or universes) with differing scales of resources. Quintet (Robert Altman, 1979) Robert Altman was one of the most eclectic directors of the ’70s, with works as varied as M*A*S*H (1970) and Nashville (1975), The […]
Perhaps disappointment isn’t quite the right word. I went into Ridley Scott’s new movie this past week without terribly high expectations. When a filmmaker decides to return to his first big hit 33 years later, it’s difficult not to believe that he’s running out of steam. The fact that he’s also working on a new […]
When I mentioned to a friend that I was writing these posts about one-off sci-fi movies by mainstream filmmakers, he pointed out that I’d left Norman Jewison off the list. I readily pleaded guilty, my only excuse being that I’d originally made the list off the top of my head and hadn’t bothered to follow […]
Watching Betrand Tavernier’s sombre, moving Death Watch (1980) recently, I started wondering about mainstream filmmakers who tried their hand just once at science fiction. While Tavernier’s film fits in with the humanistic themes which run through his work, was there a similar thematic consistency in other directors’ forays into the genre? Shot mostly on bleak […]
As usual I seem to be out of sync with the current pop culture climate – of the most recent movies I’ve gone out to see, I enjoyed a colossal box office bomb, had serious reservations about the year’s biggest success to date, and most appreciated a low budget genre movie by a first-time director. […]
Anthony Burgess wrote his short novel A Clockwork Orange in 1962 as a way of coming to terms with the rape of his first wife. It may seem odd then that the book takes the first person point of view of Alex, a 14-year-old boy, who commits numerous crimes, including rape and murder. In addition, […]
I first saw Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in St. John’s, Newfoundland, when I was 13. Like a lot of people back then, I responded to it as an “experience” rather than a narrative. I don’t think I even thought about what it might “mean”, I just got caught up in the imagery, the […]
Nostalgia can be an odd thing. As I’ve been working on my documentary about the history of movie-going in Winnipeg, and thinking about how much time I spent in the old theatres which no longer exist, and what it felt like to sit down in the dark to see something I’d heard or read about […]
There are always risks involved when revisiting a movie that impressed you years ago, when you were a lot younger and no doubt more arrogant but less wise. But it’s hard to resist taking the chance. Last year I was pleasantly surprised to find that Andrew Marton’s Crack in the World was not only just […]
I’ve been reading, and appreciating, the DVD Savant on-line column for years. Apart from Glenn Erickson’s almost terrifyingly prolific output, it’s the scope of his work that impresses. He writes in an accessible, conversational style, and yet avoids the superficiality which a lot of web-based criticism is prone to. He has a remarkable knowledge of […]