“You know, sometimes I just think I should live fast and die young, and go in a three-piece suit like Charlie Parker. Not bad, huh?” Probably the most arresting thing about Permanent Vaction (besides the ambition behind this first feature by Jim Jarmusch) are the opening images of an empty New York City. They reminded […]
Category Archives: Film Reviews
January
07
Permanent Vacation – Jim Jarmusch starts his journey of cool. (film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
January
05
The Kingdom Pt 1 – tons of fun the von Trier way. (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
Television has always left me cold. I haven’t had it habitually on for over a decade in my life, preferring films. There are television shows I like – comedies – but I get these on DVD. Even the so-called brilliant mini-series of late… notably The Wire and Breaking Bad failed to reach me. I […]
January
04
71 Fragments of a chronology of chance – Haneke ice cold. (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
Someone close to me whose film tastes I admire greatly told me this film affected them very deeply, so out of respect I raced to the video store to rent it last week. What I also got on the disc was a thirty minute interview with Michael Haneke which was fantastically interesting – I almost […]
January
03
Breaking the Waves – Lars Von Trier and the infinite sadness. (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
The key to Lars Von Triers amazing 1996 film Breaking the Waves lies in a conversation Bess (played to absolute perfection by Emily Watson) has with her husbands Doctor (played by Adrian Rawlins) when he discovers Bess is trying to solicit meaningless sex with other men to save her husband from dying. He wants to know why […]
January
02
Samsara – Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson guide your meditation. (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
“I think the substance of what I’m trying to say is really said in a nonverbal form. It’s a kind of spiritual quest. You could say we were all privileged invited guests to this mudball spinning in space. Life is the host. Life invited everyone here, and it didn’t ask anyone to approve the guest […]
January
01
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – What’s not to love after all? (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
“In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a Hobbit Hole, and that means comfort.” — The […]
December
22
Funny Games – Haneke holds a mirror. (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
I wanted the 2007 version of Funny Games tonight. I haven’t seen the version made ten years earlier, but given the nature of the film, I’m not at all surprised he chose to remake it and wouldn’t be surprised if he chose to make it again. This is a film about us as an audience […]
December
19
The Seashell and the Clergyman – Antonin Artaud, cinema and abstraction. (Film review / analysis)
posted by lisathatcher
According to Artaud’s essay Cinema and Distraction, he thanks Germaine Dulac (director of The Seashell and the Clergyman) “… who was able to appreciate a screenplay that seeks to penetrate the very essence of the cinema and is not concerned with any allusion either to art or to life.” Other reports claim that Artaud (who wrote The […]
December
12
Martha – Fassbinder takes us to the darkest place. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
The 720 degree shot shown above becomes a favorite of Fassinders after Martha, and he will go on to use it many times, particularly in Berlin Alexanderplatz. It left me breathless when I first saw it, right at the start of this long film. These are two people who do not know each other, but will become terrifyingly important […]
December
06
Magnolia – Falling frogs and coincidence, Paul Thomas Anderson Style. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
After being so impressed with Paul Thoms Anderson’s film The Master, I decided to plonk myself down in front of his previous works. I already reviewed Punch Drunk Love, which I enjoyed a great deal. The next film for me in the list was Magnolia. Magnolia is a complex film packed with symbolism and imagery that for a freudian […]
Lisa Thatcher 