Category Film Reviews
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LUCY (2014): A FILM BY LUC BESSON
August 1, 2014
Film Reviews, Updates
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The notion that Homo sapiens only use ten per cent of their brains has become commonplace; a truism whose sources include the psychological theories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and various branches of popular culture, including books, films and short stories. While the credibility of this concept has been questioned in recent times, its suggestive possibilities and tantalising implications continue to ignite and fuel the imagination.
Assuming that we only utilise a small portion of our brain power, what would happen if this limitation could be overcome? How would we relate to
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BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR (2013): A FILM BY ABDELLATIF KECHICHE
March 13, 2014
Film Reviews
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To fall in love is to navigate a nocturnal sea, on a wayward ramshackle raft, in the midst of a violent tempest, deprived of rudder, light or compass.
Love can involve submitting to, struggling against and surviving the turbulence and tension between desire and consummation, companionship and loneliness, heartfelt affection and lustful infatuation, unflinching loyalty and treacherous infidelity. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) famously argued that 'existence precedes essence', meaning that we do not have a fixed and defined human nature but, instead, are free to choose,
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‘DALLAS BUYERS CLUB’ (2013): A FILM BY JEAN-MARC VALLÉE
March 11, 2014
Film Reviews, Updates
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Sometimes the gravest news can be the greatest blessing. It is when you are informed, beyond your anticipation or comprehension, that you only have thirty days to live, that you gain a different perspective on life and rediscover the urgency of living.
Responsibility, courage, empathy, determination, an openness to difference, an attunement to the future, a commitment to others and a call to action. They can be cultivated by the confrontation with mortality and the unlikely gift of accelerated death.
As electrician, rodeo cowboy and hustler Ron Woodroof (Matthew
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TINY FURNITURE (2010): A FILM BY LENA DUNHAM
December 25, 2013
Film Reviews, Updates
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Completing a university degree is by no means an easy feat. But nothing can quite prepare you for what lies ahead, post graduation.
In Tiny Furniture, Lena Dunham (Girls) tackles the ordeal of readjusting to life beyond the confines of the university, including alleviating withdrawal symptoms from campus life, coping with the stark reality of unemployment, surviving the ensuing monotony of an intolerably tedious job and mitigating the awkwardness of negotiating existing ties while fostering and maintaining new
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THE GHOST WRITER (2010): A FILM BY ROMAN POLANSKI
December 25, 2013
Film Reviews, Updates
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A ghost writer is a phantom scribe whose output bears the name and signature of an Other, who remains anonymous and invisible, whose labour is compensated but whose contribution is uncredited. So the story goes.
In The Ghost Writer (2010), director Roman Polanski explores the grave ramifications of this spectral occupation, including the fate that befalls an exponent who is commissioned to compose the memoirs of a high profile celebrity.
For the unnamed British protagonist,
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