DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog: August 2013

Monday 26 August 2013

The Devil's Backbone

After the uninspired sophomore effort of Mimic, Guillermo Del Toro’s modest but emotional and affecting wartime ghost story represented an early career creative reboot of sorts. The Devil’s Backbone resounds best not so much for its genre scares or creature effects, but the effective point of view of children displaced by war and Del Toro’s distinctly gothic and disturbing take on the subject matter.

Friday 16 August 2013

The Big City

A remarkably poignant and mainstream accessible slice of Indian social realism from the master Indian director. The story of a conservative Indian mother and wife who finds herself embarking on a professional career outside of the cultural traditions of women at the time resounds powerfully for anyone who identifies with the struggles of personal empowerment and the conflicts of societal expectations.

Friday 9 August 2013

Only God Forgives

Nicholas Winding Refn’s talking-piece, blasted at Cannes and now viewable by the regular public in theatres and VOD, from these eyes is less the ‘pretentious exercise’ or ‘remarkable disaster’ as described by many critics than a bold audacious Tarantinoesque throwback exploitation picture told with Kubrick-influenced compositional perfection and a strong touch of Asian bombastic grandiloquence.

Thursday 8 August 2013

The Place Beyond the Pines

A tad clunky in the ambitious sprawling narrative of this picture, Derek Cianfrance’s unbridled ambition to push his storytelling abilities above and beyond Blue Valentine is a wholly admirable risk. Despite a rickety third act, which pulls together the 20 year journey of two characters on either side of the law, Pines is a thrilling auteur cinematic exercise reminscient of the ambitious blue collar dramas of the late 70’s specifically Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter.