Click HERE to read by new essay, The Last Metro: A Sequence Analysis. The essay is posted to the great film site, Battleship Pretension.
Category: 1980s
Documenting Truth: The Reinvention of Voice-over and Success of Style in Marina Goldovskaya’s Solovki Power (posted to Battleship Pretension)
CLICK HERE to read my new essay on Marina Goldovskaya’s wonderful 1998 documentary, Solovki Power, at Battleship Pretension. (and while you are there, take a look at their great site) Thank you!
White Dog (1982) – The Four-Legged Time Bomb, by Darrell Ron Tuffs
Samuel Fuller’s last American film, White Dog, was, not surprisingly, a financial failure, and was never given a wide American release. Also not surprising, was the critical success this failure came with. The film is almost perfectly constructed, and is extremely forceful and frank in delivering its underlining cultural themes. This is to the film’s…
A Short Film About Killing (1988) – Krzysztof Kieslowski (Darrell Ron Tuffs)
A youth randomly, and brutally, murders a taxi-driver. Piotr has just passed his law exams and been admitted to the bar. He is to defend Jacek, the young murderer. There is no evidence for the defence and no apparent motive. Jacek is put on trial, found guilty and executed by hanging. Piotr, after his first…
My Neighbour Totoro (1988) Hayao Miyazaki (Darrell Ron Tuffs)
Two young girls, Satsuki and her younger sister Mei, move into a house in the country with their father to be closer to their hospitalized mother. Satsuki and Mei discover a nearby forest, inhabited by magical creatures. They befriend these creatures, and are soon embarking on magical adventures with them. With the release of My…
Heathers (1988) – Michael Lehmann (Alex Harman)
It’s interesting how you can look back through decades past and find that, no matter the generation, there is always that one film that seems to epitomise the teen girls of the era. In the noughties, of course, we had Mean Girls. In the nineties it was the flawless Alicia Silverstone and friends lighting up the…
Blade Runner – 1982 (Guest Post from Niall McArdle)
Synopsis: In a rainy, polluted Los Angeles in 2019, genetic engineers for the Tyrell Corporation have created replicants – superhuman androids that are used as slave labour in outer space, and who have a built-in lifespan of only four years. Renegade replicants are hunted and killed by police officers known as “Blade Runners”. When a…
The Shining (1980) – Stanley Kubrick
Short Plot Summary: A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future.
