Robert Eggers has carved out a formidable task for himself in his violent epic, “The Northman”. The film reaches back into our love of myth as a key to understanding the origins of culture, and it does this by steeping us into barbaric, pre-literate tribal life in a hardship environment. Naturally, raw masculine power will […]
This Yorgos Lanthimos film, which he wrote with Ethymis Filippo, was released in 2017, but I only got around to seeing it some weeks ago. The title, “The Killing of a SacredDeer”, is never explained in the film, and only further research revealed that it was a modern retelling of the Iphigenia myth. Although I […]
Film remakes can be tricky things, especially when the original is not an undisputed classic. I saw the original of The Beguiled over forty years ago. Starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Don Siegel, I enjoyed it but it was not a success. He played a wounded Yankee soldier in the Civil War who stumbles […]
This new film, the Weinstein Company’s Oscar hopeful, is in a genre that I call “Life Affirmance”. Such films are usually based on the compelling experiences of real people, and are designed to connect to audiences on a deeply personal level. They nearly always end on an upbeat note, where some kind of triumph […]
