Conor Bateman's Blog, page 17

Breadcrumb Trail

I was exposed to Slint’s Spiderland in the Internet age, unaware of its contextual power or influence. I’m fairly sure it appeared on a list of the ‘Best Albums of the 1990s,’ presumably from Pitchfork, and it just became something else to consume culturally, in some conscious attempt to expand my knowledge of music. What’s striking about it, though, is even amongst a torrent of new-to-me albums, Spiderland stood out, it sounded like nothing else, with an almost languidly singular voice. It h...

The Mute (El Mudo)

Daniel and Diego Vega Vidal are often referred to in English-language film criticism as Peru’s answer to the Coen brothers, their two features films marked by character-centric dark comedy and a sense of existential dilemma. The Mute, their latest film, reinforces that perhaps this notion of similarity with the Coens is unfounded. The Vidals lack the visual daring of the Coens, nor do they carefully construct plot lines that crash into one another, nor do they rely a lot on verbal wit and imp...

Watermark

Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air features an opening credit sequence that consists of a montage of aerial photography. We move from place to place, sudden shifts from farmland to irrigation plants, cityscapes to coastlines. It seems almost alien, these areas from above appear so vibrant in colour and the shapes so perfectly arranged. When it comes to the landscape around us, we tend to forget the wider picture, both aesthetically and environmentally. In Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky’s W...

What We Do In The Shadows

Someone here in Dungog, prior to the screening of What We Do in the Shadows had said that they were excited to see the “hipster vampire film”. Whilst that seems to be a description more apt for Jim Jarmusch’s recent Only Lovers Left Alive, Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s mockumentary would at least fulfil part of that sentiment, in that it seems to actively carve out its own place in modern comedic cinema. Moving on from Flight of the Conchords and Boy, respectively, this film bursts with...

The Infinite Man

The Infinite Man came to Dungog Festival off the back of successful screenings at MIFF and SXSW, where it picked up accolades and praise for its inventive plot and engaging characters. It came as quite a shock, then, to have had such a violently negative reaction to Hugh Sullivan’s feature, which is both narratively and intellectually dull. It is a film that traffics in false ambition, using a now-tiresome premise and holding it up as some evidence of narrative complexity, when in fact the th...

Noah

It pains me to have to say that Darren Aronofsky’s latest film is his first misfire, and quite a substantial one at that. Aronofsky is one of the most interesting and innovative American filmmakers working today – Pi, The Wrestler and Requiem for a Dream are among my favourite films – yet Noah is a bloated feature that says little about faith or family, steeped in average dialogue that dulls the often dazzling visuals. It’s worth looking at as a curio, of sorts, of studio-backed insanity, in...

A Hard Day

South Korea has produced some of the finest thrillers of the 21st century; in recent memory the films of Kim Jee-woon and Park Chan-wook have not only taken simple genre conventions and turned them on their head but filled their features with a dark wit and searing violence. In an odd way, then, it’s refreshing to see a film like Kim Seong-hun‘s A Hard Day, which doesn’t even attempt to plant a distinct hyper-visual style on a well-worn narrative, but rather focuses on the humour underpinning...

Grayscaled – Nebraska in Colour and Black & White Cinema Experiments

It was announced this week that Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, which was released theatrically in black-and-white, would have its ‘colour version’ broadcast on US cable channel Epix. Thompson on Hollywood quotes producer Albert Berger as having noted that “their contract with Paramount — which financed and released the film — precluded most major showings, including theatrical and DVD/Blu-Ray – from being anything other than the black-and-white original version”. Legal issues aside, the broadcas...

Han Gong-Ju

A character study grappling with important and confronting issues, Han Gong-ju, from writer/director Lee Su-jin, falters with regards to the bigger picture. Select elements, including cinematography and some strong acting performances, allow certain scenes to have a strong emotional resonance, yet on the whole the film’s reliance on an uncompelling structure is its downfall. The film is almost something memorable, it contains the elements of many strong dramas and compelling character studies...

The Selfish Giant

We open on a striking shot – the title set amongst the stars in the skyline, the silhouette of horses peppered across the frame, the light almost surreal in its beauty – and with it director Clio Barnard seems to signal to the viewer that this film isn’t merely a tale of social realism but something more universal, perhaps transcendent even. Whether Barnard is able to achieve that universality is up for debate; the film is filled with moving sequences of family, friendship and modern adversit...