Armando Iannucci plays fast and loose with history in his farce The Death of Stalin. But its depiction of the cult of personality that can develop around political leaders is bitingly relevant.
Because the Kremlin hopes to project strength and unity, history isn’t used as much to inform as it is to inspire, with events cherry-picked to fit within a fuzzy framework of ‘Russian greatness.’
Robert Eggers’ indie film The Witch brilliantly chronicles Puritan life in the 1630s. Horror soon ensues as children disappear into the woods and one girl, Thomasina, is accused of witchcraft.
Woody Allen said it was “sad”. Quentin Tarantino said he needed to nurse his own “pain” and “emotions” about the revelations. Oliver Stone took it further – it was not just that he gave the nod to Woody…
Blade Runner 2049 represents a failure of the imagination. The film is a series of events strung together and steeped in narcissism, excessive self-absorption, isolation and regressive politics.
Denis Villeneuve’s much anticipated Blade Runner 2049 has met with mostly praise and a few notably dour takes. It appears to be yielding disappointing results at the box office. While the film is visually…
The obstreperous exclamation mark that holds a bullhorn to the title of Darren Aronofsky’s latest film befits both the mounting clamour of the work itself, and a director who, in 48 years, has yet to discover…
American cinema mines Greek myth most strongly at times of profound social anxiety. In the age of Trump, we are already seeing key political battlegrounds framed as underworld quests in film.
This year’s Toronto International Film Festival is a further example of how science, technology, engineering and math illuminate movies – and, in the process, our minds.