Author: N2811ancy_3pton

‘Airport’.

If you look at the promotional poster or the DVD release of You Were Never Really Here, one of the main quotes you’ll probably notice is from The Times, describing the work as ‘Taxi Driver for a new century’. While there’s some truth of similarities in the basic plot (a disturbed Vietnam veteran tries to save a girl from prostitution using increasingly violent means), Lynne Ramsay’s work provides a drastically different aesthetic approach in terms of editing, aesthetic and particularly characterisation. Our introduction to the monolithic Joe (Juaquin Phoenix) in the film’s first scenes is an effective example; no grand monologue about the state of the city is mentioned, and only a single intelligible diegetic word is spoken.

Continue reading “Minimalist Moments: You Were Never Really Here”

In The Gray Man‘s opening scene, future handler Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) informs Sierra Six (Ryan Gosling), who is currently incarcerated for murder, that he ‘seems the type’. And he certainly does. His first film since 2018’s First Man, Gosling has built the later part of his career on strong silent types (The Place Beyond the Pines, Drive, Only God Forgives), many of whom have taken lives in the interest of survival. It might seem disconcerting, then, when Six (a characteristically brief name for Gosling’s characters – the original name from the books, Court Gentry, is pretty much ignored) hits back at Fitzroy with several nonchalant comebacks. Multiple sentences are spoken. The veteran Gosling viewer might be concerned. Is this man going to exceed the sparse word counts of his previous laconic antiheroes (Driver utters only 116 lines; Only God Forgives’ Julian? A mere 17)?

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With the ever-increasing number of pokémon, the task of truly catching ‘em all has become slightly tiresome. With the original 151, it at least felt doable, providing you had some friends to trade with (if you didn’t, however, more fool you). It’s refreshing then, that Legends Arceus draws the focus away from the monumental task of catching these huge amounts of creatures, and instead provides a more research-based approach. Does it all work, though? Read on to find out.

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‘Can’t you hear me?’

The point of view shot is hardly a novel camera angle. We are often presented with an image, whether that might be a low angle shot of the Deadly Vipers staring down at you (Kill Bill Vol. 1), your crush gliding towards you in slow motion (The Royal Tenenbaums), or images of foreign human vessels moving around you (The Terminator). In this standard use of the technique, an image is shown of an environment containing significant objects or persons, and is subsequently followed by an image of the person who has just been viewing the previous image. It immerses the viewer in the narrative, making them connect with the character’s emotional state.

Continue reading “Minimalist Moments: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”

The phrase is more readily associated with university campuses; signs warning students that the content of lectures contains upsetting content which they might wish to avoid. Trigger warnings have come to be associated with debates about political correctness in the culture wars, but the recent online backlash about the portrayal of cancer in Taikka Wahiti’s latest Marvel entry bring new issues into the discussion.

Continue reading “Thor: Love and Thunder – Trigger Warnings For Cancer?”