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All articles by Stephanie Lundahl
03 April 2012
When it premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year, Steve McQueen’s Shame quickly became notorious for being a movie about sex. While sex, and sexuality, play a large part in the film, to write it off as “a movie about sex” is simplistic and a little dismissive. Shame is more properly described as a movie about addiction, isolation, and loneliness. It is in many ways a very brave...
24 January 2012
David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises has all the elements of a conventional crime thriller, except that it has the ambition to be more, and a director with the skill to push it beyond genre limitations. It begins with two deaths and a birth – one death is a violet, mob related murder; the other is a death in childbirth and, given what we quickly come to understand about the mother, it can...
05 December 2011
Cinematic tragedies occur in two forms: the kind that happen on-screen, and the kind that happen off-screen when films are made and then left to languish by their studios. Sometimes those films are bad and the studio dumps them in order to minimize the costs of advertising in the hopes of recouping even a small profit, but other times those films are masterpieces the studio simply doesn’t have...
18 October 2011
It has to mean something, otherwise it’s just a game, played and then forgotten. Bennett Miller’s Moneyball, based loosely on Michael Lewis’ book of the same name, is about the pursuit of lasting meaning in an industry where you’re only as good as the final score of your last match. That such meaning is found by undermining the spirit of the game (at least according to some critics) complicates...
14 September 2011
Oliver Stone’s 2004 epic Alexander is a hulking behemoth of a film begging for a sharper edit and a solid sense of purpose. It rambles through its 167 minutes running time (alternate versions run at 175 and 214 minutes, respectively), repeatedly informing us that Alexander was a great military leader and politician, but rarely giving the audience any insight into what makes him tick and how he...
10 August 2011
As his name suggests, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a man of singular purpose, and There Will Be Blood follows him towards the end in a similar fashion. The film and its protagonist are unapologetic and unrepentant in pursuit of their goals, determined to attain them and willing to steamroll over anything in the way. Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson guides the film with precision and...
06 July 2011
Few filmmakers are capable of as much unrestrained joy as the great Federico Fellini. Yes, there is darkness at the edges of many of his films, but at the core of most of his work there is such joie de vivre that the lightness is what you ultimately remember. I Vitelloni, Fellini’s second solo effort as director after the White Sheik, is a film about a group of young men making that final,...
05 June 2011
Aaron Schneider’s Get Low is a story centering on ideas of mortality and legacy. It’s the kind of slow moving story in which the pleasure of viewing comes less from the resolution of the plot, and more from watching the characters develop and unfold. It is anchored by a wonderful performance by the great Robert Duvall and terrific supporting performances from Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek, and Lucas...
14 April 2011
Sam Taylor-Wood’s Nowhere Boy is not the story of The Beatles but, rather, the story of what would eventually make The Beatles possible. It’s a story of musical discovery and painful coming of age, a family drama that invites every possible opportunity for melodrama but somehow always finds the right note and never descends into overwrought treacle. Based on the biography by John Lennon’s sister...
30 March 2011
D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation is a film that is not easy to discuss. It is not a film that can exist within the contained space of a screen, but one that reaches out into the world, its legacy sometimes overshadowing the fact of its craft. It is a landmark film on a technical level, one which helped develop the cinematic language that moviegoers take for granted today. It is also a deeply...
14 March 2011
Another Year, like most of Mike Leigh’s work, is a film that is content to simply watch its characters. It moves slowly, bending itself to the rhythms of the routines of its characters, occasionally disrupted by some event or another but always quickly settling back into the familiar. It is a rich character film, though it may be too slow moving for some and doesn’t quite reach the joyful heights...
14 February 2011
Where does love go? Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine does not attempt to answer that question, but instead offers a frank, sometimes brutal, meditation on the vacuum created once affection spends itself. This is a portrait of a relationship on the precipice, of two people torn apart by their personal disappointments and struggling to keep their heads above water. Beautifully crafted and executed...
18 January 2011
Black Swan, the latest film from director Darren Aronofsky, is an intense psychological journey. It is deeply entrenched in sexual repression and shame and its protagonist is driven over the edge when tasked with connecting, on any level, to her sensuality. With a captivating performance by Natalie Portman at its centre, Black Swan is a fascinating film on an intellectual level and an enthralling...
17 December 2010
Francis Ford Coppola is no stranger to family sagas, having gifted the world with the operatic sweep of the Godfather films. Tetro, his latest film, is tragedy on a slightly smaller scale but it marks a return to form for the filmmaker after two decades of work ranging from disappointing to middling. With a strong screenplay and great performances all around, Tetro manages to be both an intensely...
20 November 2010
John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman is one of the great post-modernist novels, a work high on style but also incredibly engaging as a story. Adapting it to the screen in a way that would retain the book’s spirit must have been a Herculean task, but between them, director Karel Reisz and screenwriter Harold Pinter managed it, creating a film that feels true to the source in every way....
29 October 2010
As filmmakers go, Robert Altman can be an acquired taste. He typically likes to play with big casts and big themes and drop the viewer right into the middle of it all. He unfolds his stories according to Hemingway's iceberg theory, wherein you can only see the tip while the great mass of the thing remains beneath the surface, suggested but not directly explored. The Long Goodbye, made between the...
10 October 2010
Anti-war films are notoriously difficult to make. Action sequences, by their very nature, elicit excitement from the viewer and that reaction often undercuts the message a film is trying to impart. On rare occasions, the message is strong enough that it overcomes the sense of adventure and excitement borne of action sequences. Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp is one such example. The story of The...
10 July 2010
Hot Fuzz is the type of movie that offers up something for just about anyone, though unlike many such films it excels at multitasking. Easily classified as a comedy, an action movie, a mystery and a satire, it is an exceptionally well-rendered film and an instant classic. The film centers on supercop Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), a London police officer who is so proficient that he puts the rest...
29 June 2010
"Are you my friend now?" Connor (Michael Fassbinder) asks Mia (Katie Jarvis) about mid-way through Fish Tank. It's a fair question, given how turbulent her emotions are, particularly where he's been concerned. One moment she likes him, the next she's lashing out at him; she's 15, it's a tough time. Making it tougher is her less than ideal home life. Her mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), is more...
31 May 2010
Neil Marshall’s The Descent is the kind of movie that makes converts out of people who don’t normally gravitate towards the horror genre. It not only delivers on the scares but does so by constructing a compelling story around its gory set pieces. It is truly a film that transcends the boundaries of genre and can simply be called “good” rather than “good for a horror movie.” The film opens with a...
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