Peter Machen on slow film at DIFF 2012

Posted on July 21, 2012 by admin
In this accelerated age there are still some films that require us to slow down and surrender to the screen. And it’s not a bad thing, writes Peter Machen.

I was talking to a friend of mine about the mix of films at this year’s Durban International Film Festival, and about the fact that, while many of the films will be engaging and easily accessible to mainstream audiences, there are some movies that require a certain surrender from viewers, a different mode of viewing from one that is perpetually primed for the next piece of action or twist in the tale. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’

Posted on June 15, 2012 by admin
Film: The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Country: France
Year of Release: 2011
Director: Robert Guédiguian
Screenwriters: Robert Guédiguian, Jean-Louis Milesi
Starring: Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Gérard Meylan, Marilyne Canto, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥½

You would never know it from the fantastical offerings that populate most cinema screens but there has, over the last year or two, emerged a distinct genre of film that could be described fairly accurately as recession dramas, a genre which focuses not on housing bubbles or the sub-prime crisis but on the human costs of a global economy that seems to be faltering with ever-increasing persistence. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘The Three Stooges’

Posted on June 1, 2012 by admin
Film: The Three Stooges
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Bobby and Peter Farrelly
Screenwriters: Mike Cerrone, Bonny Farrelly, Peter Farrelly
Starring: Sean Hayes, Will Sasso and Chris Diamantopoulos
Review: Peter Machen
♥

Some movies can punch you in the gut. Although it’s not a frequent experience, when it happens, it is often achieved by an intelligent blend of powerful acting, carefully controlled direction, well-edited cinematography and strong writing. This was not the case, though, with The Three Stooges, which I watched at Gateway on a cold and rainy Wednesday night. Instead the movie left me emotionally shell-shocked, as I wandered around the shopping monolith after dark, and wondered for the future of humanity. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’

Posted on June 1, 2012 by admin
Film: Snow White and the Huntsman
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Rupert Sanders
Screenwriters: Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock, Hossein Amini
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron, Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥½

After the shocking mess that was Mirror Mirror, it’s something of a relief to report that this latest rendition of the classic fairy tale – apparently the 20th filmed version – is, for the most part, an engaging and visually dazzling affair that owes as much of its lineage to Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth as it does to Walt Disney’s 1937 work Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘The Rum Diary’

Posted on May 25, 2012 by admin
Film: The Rum Diary
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2011
Director: Bruce Robinson
Screenwriter: Bruce Robinson
 Starring: Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart, Amber Heard, Giovanni Ribisi
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥

The three-way partnership between Hunter S Thompson, Johnny Depp and Terry Gilliam that was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has become one of the most well-loved cult film of the last few decades, its mix of Thompson’s drug-fuelled insanity, edgy direction from Gilliam and an utterly committed performance from Depp providing a fairly accurate rendition  of Thompson’s revolutionary text. Those expecting more of the same with The Rum Diary are likely to be disappointed. For the festering surrealism and tinges of insanity that came to define Thompson’s later writing and public persona are largely absent here in this rather light coming-of-age tale. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Shame’

Posted on May 11, 2012 by admin
Film: Shame
Country: UK
Year of Release: 2011
Director: Steve McQueen
Screenwriters: Steve McQueen, Abi Morgan
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, Nicole Beharie
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥♥

If you’re going to be a sex addict, it certainly helps to look like Michael Fassbender. And it doubly helps to be as generously endowed as the increasingly famous actor, an endowment of such substance that it has dominated all discussion of this film about the downward spiral of a sex addict. Except that, despite much sex and much downward spiralling, Shame isn’t really a film about sex addiction per se, and despite all the hype around the film and Fassbender’s, er, substantial talent, it doesn’t pretend to be. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Dark Shadows’

Posted on May 11, 2012 by admin
Film: Dark Shadows
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Tim Burton
Screenwriter: Seth Grahame-Smith
Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny-Lee Miller
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥

Tim Burton must be the world’s most famous cult director. From Edward Scissorhands to Mars Attacks to The Adamms Family, Burton has produced some of the most charming and memorable films of the last 20 years, all dripping with his distinctive gothic style and surreal humour, and often imbued with large quantities of emotional truth. But despite his major contributions to cinema and the fact that he is capable of earning big money for the studios (his Alice in Wonderland has now topped $1 billion at the global box office), Tim Burton is not a household name and a Tim Burton film is not necessarily a hit – which has as much to do with the director’s integrity as it does with mainstream media’s inability to integrate his wild card genius into the terrain of genuine celebrity. Burton clearly isn’t driven by box office concerns, and he seems just as happy – happier perhaps – making small, delicately deranged films as he is with blockbusters. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘The Grey’

Posted on April 20, 2012 by admin
Film: The Grey
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Joe Carnahan
Screenwriters: Joe Carnahan, Ian Mackenzie Jeffers
Starring: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥

Towards the beginning of The Grey , which opened on circuit last Friday, a man named Ottway (Liam Neeson) and a group of workers board a small plane in Alaska on the kind of howling, blustery night that no sane person would fly. As such, when the plane goes down, it’s not much of a surprise. What might surprise viewers, however, is the sheer realism of the crash, so viscerally delivered by director Joe Carnahan, that when Ottway wakes up lying in the snow, with the beginning of frost-bite starting to take hold, it’s an utterly believable moment drenched in hopeless desolation. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘The Hunger Games’

Posted on April 13, 2012 by admin
Film: The Hunger Games
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Gary Ross
Screenwriters: Gary Ross, Suzanne Collins, Billy Ray
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Donald Sutherland, Stanley Tucci, Wes Bentley
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥½

For those readers who’ve been hiding beneath the proverbial rock for the last couple of years, The Hunger Games is based on the massively successful series of novels by Suzanne Collins. Directed at young adults, the novels have acquired a far wider audience, although I should acknowledge that that audience has thus far excluded me, despite the series’ tantalising premise. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Battleship’

Posted on April 3, 2012 by admin
Film: Battleship
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Peter Berg
Screenwriters: Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber
Starring: Alexander Skarsgård, Brooklyn Decker and Liam Neeson
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥

Anyone who’s ever played the strategy board game Battleship might, on hearing that there’s a movie version, wonder how it would convert dramatically. For those not versed in the game – and I’ve only played it a couple of times myself – it’s basically a more complex version of the windows desktop game Minesweeper, played on a grid and based on simple logic, and really not in any way spectacularly exciting. It seems that the producers of the film arrived at the same conclusion, and found a simple answer to the question of how to add some fizz. Throw in some aliens, and let them resemble giant Transformers who are intent on taking over the world. The fact that toy company Hasbro, which owns the Transformers franchise also owns the rights to the Battleship game has much to do with the film’s existence. Continue reading →

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