Watching a film by Werner Herzog is never an easy task. It is the antithesis of the traditional Hollywood entertainment-driven movie. Herzog’s films make you work and think, they force you to participate by investing your strength, your intelligence and your entire emotional being into the experience. Through his subject matters, his startling use of imagery and his haunting scores, Herzog demands constant involvement from his audience. An unfortunately too-rare form of cinema, his films continue to raise pertinent questions about some of the most interesting issues today.

Lessons of Darkness captures the devastation of Kuwait in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. More specifically, it is a portray of a wounded earth that is left shedding tears of fire due to the greed and savagery of Man. Not content to decimate and to ruin, Man also turns his bestiality towards other men and engages in horrible crimes which for any reasonably sane person are impossible to comprehend.

As i watched Herzog turning ugliness into beauty with his camera, music and editing, i could not help but weep at a world gone terribly wrong. 14 years before Edward Burtynsky made his Manufactured Landscapes (2006), Herzog used stunning visualization to show only one of the myriad of ways in which Man is impacting this Earth and is redefining the landscape and the entire ecosystem to his liking. Unfortunately for all of us, this redesigning comes without a plan and is driven by selfish motives rather than by a desire to develop a system where Man’s constant desire for progress can co-exist harmoniously with Nature.

While a Technogaianist myself, and thus a believer in technology as a means to achieve this harmony, Lessons of Darkness made me long at times for some of the scenarios that Alan Weisman so eloquently depicted in his seminal book The World Without Us (2007). It is comforting to know that Nature would eventually reclaim what is rightfully hers. But wishing it all away won’t make it go away and we must move forward and attempt to reconcile our innate propensity for greed and egoism with the need for ecological health and stability.

This British low budget mishmash of cyberpunk, horror and exploitation has become a bit of a cult classic in certain circles. The idea was apparently entirely stolen from a story called Shock! that appeared in the 80s in the comic book 2000AD, which is a bit of a shame since it takes away from one of the film’s main attributes: its originality (in spite of several commonalities with Terminator).
Nonetheless, equipped with a meagre budget of 100,000 dollars, Richard Stanley managed to create quite a dreadful, claustrophobic and apocalyptic atmosphere that effectively captured the spirit of decay, waste and techno-paranoia associated with Cyberpunk. The film also contains several musical references that many connoisseurs will enjoy.
Unfortunately, beyond the visual and musical aspects, and with the exception of a few cheap thrills and a couple of funny cheesy lines, the film has little to offer and feels quite amateurish and boring at times.

For a certain crowd only.

I am bewildered that this film actually received several positive reviews. And it is because of these reviews that I decided to watch it. Roger Ebert even called it ‘smart Science Fiction’. What is he smoking? I should know better than to trust him, but still, my curiosity was aroused. Yet, the film is clichés and inconsistencies-ridden and Charlie Sheen couldn’t look more out of place as the nerd who discovers the aliens’ secrets if he were playing a priest preaching abstinence. And of course, the Aliens walk on two legs, carry guns (hello?), resort to all types of absurd killing methods that never succeed (enough to make Dr Evil proud), and, last but not least, have decided that Man is a menace and must be eliminated through….the terraforming of earth. I guess these are nature loving aliens…

There is nothing, absolutely nothing worth anything in this film. Gratuitous, empty, silly, embarrassing violence. Pompous and annoying camera movements and angles. Exagerated and exasperating acting. Repugnant…ok i stop now.

Film architecture and design has existed almost as long as cinema itself. In 1976, Leon Barsacq argued in Caligari’s Cabinet And Other Grand Illusions that the fantasist sets developed by Georges Melies at the beginning of the 20th century were a considerable improvement over anything that had been done previously in that they created a deeper reality and gave the image a more substantial meaning. He further added that cinema escaped its primitive phase once it moved away from simple backdrops to three-dimensional sets, thereby creating an architectural space within cinema[1]. Post World War I, the German Expressionists fully explored this new architectural space through the creation of sets that attempted to reflect the inner emotions of the characters in the films. And David O. Selznik’s use of the term ‘production design’ in reference to the work of the American director and set designer William Cameron Menzies on Gone with the Wind (1939), finally helped film design and architecture gain the official recognition and visibility that has since become an integral part of the cinematic experience and of the output of most film industries.

Following fairly closely the emergence of production values in the history of cinema has been the rise and acceptance of science fiction cinema. It is indisputable that the two are interconnected and that a process exists where both feed off from one another. Cinema learns from architecture and architecture learns from cinema. As far back as 1926, many architects were said to have been impressed and influenced by Metropolis (1926). Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 (1968) also apparently became a source of inspiration for the world of architecture, with the director himself having sourced a lot of his inspiration from several existing architectural and design trends and concepts. Today, terms like ‘science fiction architecture’, ‘high-tech architecture’ or ‘cyber architecture’ are commonly used to refer to a new and ‘modern’ style of architecture that draws heavily on science fiction and new technologies. For many architects, ‘science fiction is an imaginative form of design’[2], making its visualizations worth studying.

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This is what happens when you mix British social realism with Hollywood style feel good comedy. The result is entertaining, sweet, emotional at times and much less gritty than one would expect when dealing with the condition of coal miners.

Mike Hodges’ existential tale of addiction and self discovery, set in the nocturnal underground world of gambling, may seem pretentious at times, but the end result is a enthralling moody piece that doesn’t let go.

This very pretentious film, based on a story by Stephen King, claims to explore the nature of evil through the relationship between a young man who is fascinated by the Holocaust and the ex SS officer he helps unmask. With the exception of Ian McKellen, who is at his usual best, the film has in fact very little to offer in terms of interesting psychological or sociological insights. Any serious attempt at investigating ‘what makes us do what we do’ is unfortunately quickly sacrificed in favor of a cheap, action-driven narrative that has the audacity to pretend that it can deal with such a serious and grave subject matter.

One of the most admirable films i have seen in quite a while. This Iranian film tells the story of two girls who, after spending their entire childhood locked inside their parents’ home, are ‘released’ into the real world by a child counselor. Allegorical, metaphorical, The Apple explores themes of growing up, parenthood, the roles of men and women in Iranian society, and really, what it means to be free and to live.

Believe it or not, i did enjoy Vanilla Sky. So to see Open your Eyes, the original Spanish film upon which the Cameron Crowe remake was based, proved quite an enjoyable experience. No Tom Cruise, no overbearing and dictative typical Cameron Crowe pop soundtrack, this original version feels truer, richer and deeper.

Nominated for 5 Academy Awards and the recipient of 3 BAFTAs as well as Cannes’ prestigious Palme D’Or in 1996, Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies is a wonderful tragicomic tale of a group of people trying to manage the difficulties that life has presented to them.
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What can i say? I loved it. It is pompous and arrogant in a stereotypically French manner while seemingly denouncing pompous and arrogant French cinema. This film within a film constantly draws attention to itself by putting form in the forefront, reminding us of Le Mepris or 8 1/2, but does a much better job than Shadow of the Vampire in its reliance on an old classic as a base for a modern film.

It took me a while to finally watched this one, only to be disappointed. The fun of the experiment that is this film wears out quickly and this 75 minutes music video ends up leaving you empty.

A wonderfully crafted love story between an ex-porn actress and the man who kidnaps her, this is a beautiful and solid comedy with engaging quirky characters, witty dialogs and a perfect mise-en-scene. Another Almodovar masterpiece.

Fun, sexy, witty, this often overlooked gem by Soderbergh is what entertaining cinema should always be about. Clooney and Lopez are electric together and the elevator scene is especially brilliant and memorable.

British Science Fiction cinema has always lived in the shadow of its American counterpart, either as a result of a direct effort to emulate an American style to enable the films to reach broader markets or as an indirect consequence of the fact that, since the 50’s, Science Fiction cinema has been associated with America, drawing on its rich heritage of comics and magazines.

But British Science Fiction cinema has in fact a much greater legacy than is often given credit to. Since the beginning of the 20th century, various British directors and producers have explored the genre, often taking it into new directions, pushing its boundaries, and drawing on the wealth of ideas and masterful works which British Science Fiction writers like H.G Wells, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Arthur C. Clarke, John Wyndham and Michael Moorcock have produced over the years.

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I wish i had seen Nakata’s film when it came out. Instead, i became the victim of hype and overblown expectations. Ring offers an interesting premise and quite an appealing mix of myths and supernatural ideas, all blended together in a somewhat scary film that seems remarkably appropriate for the modern age. The cinematography uses dark and bluish tones perfectly to create tension and the sparse dialogues reinforce the visual aspect of the film. However, they cannot hide a narrative and overall storyline that often feels forced and stitched up.