Vantage Point first published by musicOMH, 7 Mar 2008 “There are other stories here.” So complains reporter Angie Jones (Zoe Saldana) to her news producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver), when the latter insists “we’re here for the summit, not the sideshow”. With a large team of cameramen (for maximum visual coverage), they are in a…
Body horror and the beauty myth: six influences and intertexts for Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance first published by BFI, 21 September 2024 Includes capsules of: The Fly (1958), Seconds, The Shining, Basket Case, Yoga Hakwon, Replace In Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024), fallen Tinseltown star Elisabeth Sprinkle (Demi Moore) agrees, at age 50, to undergo…
The Substance had its UK première at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024, 20 Aug The Substance opens with a diptych of prologues, showing, in reverse order, a terminal condition and its tentative, experimental cure. The first image is a top-down shot of a chicken’s egg out of its shell on a pale blue surface. Injected…
The Day After Tomorrow first published by Movie Gazette, 26 Feb, 2004 In director Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day (1996), a boffin eventually defeats the space aliens that have wrought explosive havoc all over America (and incidentally the rest of the world) – without provocation. In Godzilla (1998), a boffin eventually defeats the giant iguana that…
Crazy Mama first published by Little White Lies, as entry 155 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column “You ladies are dangerous. This is America.” The speaker is landlord Mr Albertson (Jim Backus), surprised to see, as he evicts Melba Stokes (Cloris Leachman) and her mother Sheba (Ann Sothern) for failing to meet rent on their hair…
Kin first published by Sight & Sound, Jan/Feb 2019 Review: Jonathan and Josh Baker’s Kin, adapted and considerably expanded (by writer Daniel Casey) from their short film Bag Man (2014), opens with an exterior shot of a bleakly derelict factory under a grey sky. Alongside this ruined vision of contemporary apocalypse – in present-day Detroit – there lies a ‘One Way’ road…