Hello, Science!:
Movie Review

The opening minutes of Anton Corbijn’s The American provide a near perfect taste as to the style and sensibilities of the movie that will follow. Against a backdrop of gorgeous scenery in an isolated European locale, a man commits an act of violence so sudden and detached that it seems as though it did not happen at all. The man (played by George Clooney) is a weary hit-man on the run from unknown pursuers who are hunting him for down for some previously committed deed. Fleeing to a small Italian village, our protagonist, now going by the name of Edward, befriends a local priest and beds a local prostitute, and is soon convinced by his shady employer to take one final job building a custom-designed rifle for another assassin. Despite doing almost nothing to escape the narrative pitfalls of the hit-man genre, The American is a film that still manages to stands out because of its refusal to descend into either cheap thrills or overstated melodrama, resulting in a quiet and restrained thriller with a deep undercurrent of yearning eroticism and unmistakable regret.

Based on the 1978 novel of the same name, Darren Aronofsky’s follow up to his debut feature Pi is a dark and distressing tale about the perils of addiction, and is undoubtedly one of the most visually and aurally distinctive movies of the early twenty first century. Requiem for a Dream follows four Coney Islanders – Harry, his girlfriend Marion, best friend Tyrone and mother Sara – over three seasons – summer, fall and winter – as they attempt to live with their addictions before finally being overwhelmed by the unforeseen yet inevitable consequences of their decisions. Dealing with themes of desperation, delusion, selfishness and human weakness, Requiem for a Dream is at times unflinchingly bleak - it’s nighmarish depiction of the horrors of drug use will put you on the straight and narrow faster than any afterschool special. In all honesty, it may well be one of the most depressing movies ever made. It is also one of the best.

While it was his frenetic visual style that made Fight Club one of the definitive pictures of the nineteen-nineties, recent years have seen David Fincher take on an increasingly controlled and reflective approach to movie-making. His latest undertaking – a follow-up to the Academy Award nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – is The Social Network, an enthralling tale of betrayal and intellectual property theft based loosely on the real life founding of the massively popular internet website, Facebook. Adapted from perhaps one of the best scripts in living memory by West Wing scribe Aaron Sorkin, the movie is a stunningly absorbing and superbly acted drama with a flawless pace and mesmerizing aesthetic. It is a film that offers a brutal critique of one of its most influential figures of the internet age, and one that sees Fincher’s evolution as both a storyteller and an artist come magnificently to a head.

Bruce Campbell and his mother of all chins returns for one more grueling adventure in Sam Raimi’s beloved underground classic, Army of Darkness. After two horrific nights spent fighting the demonic undead in the Tennessee woods, the last and by far the most ludicrous film in the Evil Dead trilogy sees its wise cracking, shotgun wielding, chain-saw-limbed hero Ash Williams (Campbell) sent back in time to medieval Europe, where he is forced to do battle once more with the forces of evil. With marauding battalions of skeletons and gushing geysers of blood, director Sam Raimi all but abandons the disturbing violence of the original Evil Dead with this over-the-top, slapstick and wildly entertaining horror-comedy, capping off one of the most celebrated cult sagas in cinematic history.

Fresh off the heels of the wildly successful and critically beloved superhero film The Dark Knight, British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan crafts a complicated, exciting, original and at times genuinely awe-inspiring science fiction thriller called Inception. Centred around a group of thieves who enter a man’s subconscious in order to plant an idea deep within the recesses of his mind, the movie deals with notions of reality and perception with an intelligence rarely seen in big budget action pictures, while at the same time more than delivering on all the thrills that mainstream audiences demand. Given that Nolan directed not one but two of my all times favourite films, it is fair to say that my expectations for Inception were fairly high; the fact that he was able to once again surpass everything I could have hoped for cements him as one of the most talented and ambitious minds working in the entertainment industry today.

When is a piece of art not a piece of art? Does an image have to be committed to canvas before it is beautiful or meaningful? Need an artist be professionally trained, or can a hoodlum with a stocking on his head create something worthwhile? For years, the world of street-art has existed all around us; disenfranchised individuals taking to the cities, using spray cans, stencils, stickers – whatever they could – as a means to express themselves wherever they could. But the question still exists: are they creating art? Exit Through The Gift Shop is the documentary with the opportunity to answer that question, as well as to showcase some of the most talented individuals in an industry flourishing just outside the law. Like the very best pieces of street-art, the film is spectacularly original, ironically funny, defiantly independent and effortlessly cool, and the fact that the whole thing might be nothing more than an elaborate prank by the world’s most renowned street-art not only makes the movie that much more interesting, but also reflects better than anything the elusive and rebellious art form that it supposedly documents.