Watching a narrative film made in Hollywood is a lot like riding a skateboard downhill; you look to find your point of balance and once that’s established, gravity will do the rest. That said, I found Maestro a difficult film to find my balance on.
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Maestro
Posted in Film, Netflix with tags Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Edna St Vincent Millay, Ely Cathedral, Hollywood, Killers of the Flower Moon, Leonard Bernstein, LGBTQI+, Maestro, Mahler, Martin Scorsese, Netflix, Tar on January 1, 2024 by Jarrod BoyleDe Palma Goes For Gold
Posted in Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Al Pacino, Alfred Hitchcock, Body Double, Brian De Palma, Drill, Eli Roth, Hostel, Hostel II, Jake Scully, Klute, misogyny, Noah Baumbach, Penis, Rear Window, Scarface, still life, Toorak, Trak Cinema, Vertigo, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema on September 18, 2023 by Jarrod BoyleI was surprised I’d never seen Brian De Palma’s 1984 film Body Double until I discovered it available for free-to-air viewing on SBS iView last night. My interest was piqued the night before when I watched Noah Baumbach’s doco De Palma, recommended by a friend.
Continue readingBetter Than the Real Thing? Love in Blade Runner 2049
Posted in Film with tags Blade Runner 2049, Elvis, K, kindness, love, Pornography, Stanley Kubrick, The Shining on April 23, 2023 by Jarrod Boyle‘…On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth…’
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera.
The protagonist, a blade runner named K, is in love with his AI. She’s essentially a hologram, and in a pivotal scene, she organises a ‘pleasure model’ to come to his apartment so she can merge herself with it in order to make love to him.
Continue reading‘The Men Who Came Too Late and Stayed Too Long.’
Posted in Film, Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags Bryan Dorries, David Fincher, Pauline Kael, Peckinpah, Roger Ebert, The Wild Bunch on March 25, 2023 by Jarrod Boyle2.
What I like about Peckinpah is that you never know what you’re going to get. You’re certainly not there to be ‘entertained’. Like David Fincher says, it’s going to leave a scar.
Continue reading‘The Men Who Came Too Late and Stayed Too Long.’
Posted in Film, Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags Apocalypse, Billie Eilish, COVID, hip replacement, Ocean Eyes, Point Break, Sam Peckinpah, Straw Dogs, Surgery, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Wild Bunch on March 19, 2023 by Jarrod Boyle1.
Surgery is a major life event. I had a hip replacement, which means full derailment; it’s a paradigm shift quite unlike any other. And most of the time, paradigm shifts find you stranded in a world that’s changed and requires that you develop new skills in order to cope. In my case, I return to the world with a certain ability that I had lost, namely, the ability to walk and stand square and strong, without pain.
Continue readingPoint Break: Redux
Posted in Film, Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags Bodhi, Bromance, Dirty Harry, Dirty Harry Callaghan, Ex=presidents, High Noon, John Pilger, Johnny Utah, Kathryn Bigelow, Point Break, Ronald Reagan, Simone De Beauvoir, The Hurt Locker, The Wild Bunch, Will Kane on February 18, 2023 by Jarrod Boyle2.
Once he discovers his newfound friends and mentor are actually the ex-presidents, Johnny draws his line. During a botched stakeout shortly after, Utah reveals his identity when he pursues them in an attempt to capture.
Continue readingPoint Break: Redux
Posted in Film, Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags bank robbery, Daniel San, ex-presidents, FBI, Johnny Utah, Keanu Reeves, Mr Miyagi, Patrick Swayze, Point Break, surfing, The Karate Kid on February 3, 2023 by Jarrod Boyle1.
I had very little memory of the film when I switched it on to pass a recent Saturday evening, and was concerned that watching an ‘old’ film from my teenaged years had become a recreational activity worthy of my time.
Continue readingEx Machina
Posted in Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Alex Garland, Bluebeard, Ex Machina, Jackson Pollock, Kyoko, Robert Oppenheimer, Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex on August 26, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle2.
Bluebeard is the grisly tale of a powerful, wealthy nobleman who marries a young, innocent peasant girl. She discovers, while he is away, that her new husband has beheaded his previous wives once they have ceased to amuse him. In part, it is a cautionary tale about a rich, powerful man’s objectification of a young, naive woman.
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Posted in Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Blade Runner, Netflix, Parasite, Stan, Turing Test on August 24, 2021 by Jarrod BoyleI tend to peruse my Netflix and Stan accounts with dismay. Firstly, they clash with the portrait I paint of myself socially, as someone who ‘doesn’t watch television.’ Secondly, I find that I’ll open an account with a streaming service because I want to see something specific, like Parasite, for example, and then I’m confounded by the volume of crap I don’t want to see that comes with it.
Continue readingThe Neon Demon
Posted in Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Aleister Crowley, Bret Easton Ellis, Drive, Los Angeles, Nicolas Winding Refn, Peter Bradshaw, Sergei Eisenstein, The Guardian, The Neon Demon on June 14, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle“Evil floats, weightlessly across the landscape of Los Angeles in Nicolas Winding Refn’s new film, The Neon Demon, co-scripted with TV writer Mary Laws and British dramatist Polly Stenham. It is a reverie of such sheer satanic rapture that Refn could be on danger of taking Bret Easton Elis’ crown as the Aleister Crowley of the 21st century.”
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