Watching Baz Luhrmann's award-winning Moulin Rouge is a lot like falling in love. It is total immersion cinema and while you're experiencing it ("watching" is too passive a word) you can't imagine that cinema could be for anything else. In the harsh, objective post-viewing daylight Lurhmann's gaudy spectacular might seem like a triumph of glossy style over any genuine substance, but as the ...
The Invasion deserves a second chance on DVD. This ambitious sci-fi thriller represents a flawed yet worthy attempt to bring contemporary vitality to Jack Finney's classic science fiction novel, previously filmed as Don Siegel's 1956 classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Philip Kaufman's suspenseful 1978 remake, and Abel Ferrara's highly underrated Body Snatchers from 1994. ...
A welcome throwback to the spooky traditions of Jack Clayton's The Innocents and Robert Wise's The Haunting, Alejandro Amenábar's The Others favours atmosphere, sound, and suggestion over flashy special effects. Set in 1945 on a fog-enshrouded island off the British coast, the film begins with a scream as Grace (Nicole Kidman) awakens from some unspoken horror, perhaps arising ...
Actor Griffin Dunne improves a bit on his first film as a director, Addicted to Love, with this drama-comedy about a family of witches. Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock play spell-casting sisters of different temperaments: the former is a high-living, free-spirited sort, while Bullock's character is a homebody who can't get around a family curse that kills the men in their lives. A widowed ...
To date Stanley Kubrick remains one of cinema's most controversial film-maker. This box set highlights some of his greatest work, from the visionary 2001:A Space Odyssey, the violent and highly-debated A Clockwork Orange, the chilling adaptation of The Shining, the acclaimed war drama Full Metal Jacket, to his final piece, the controversial Eyes Wide Shut. And to ...
Watching Baz Luhrmann's award-winning Moulin Rouge is a lot like falling in love. It is total immersion cinema and while you're experiencing it ("watching" is too passive a word) you can't imagine that cinema could be for anything else. In the harsh, objective post-viewing daylight Lurhmann's gaudy spectacular might seem like a triumph of glossy style over any genuine substance, but as the ...