Thirst With all the teen-vampire fanaticism, the foreign art-film take on Dracula might pass you by. However, Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In, and the Korean Park Chan-Wook’s Thirst are original romances where bloodlust is anything but skin deep. Park is best known for his vengeance triology, (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Old Boy, and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance). In these films, characters who are subjected to violence become heroes when they retaliate with elaborate murder schemes. One suffers through gore in his films’ first half, but the conclusive proof of justice is in fact more blood and pain. Eventually, the carnage becomes more delicious than disgusting, for it is all bloodshed in the name of fairness.
French Cinema in 2008, at the César awards. My expectations for the 2008 César awards were high. Since the French make better films, dress better and speak a better language, surely their Academy Awards would be superior. What’s more, I was suffering from cinema...
Although I long ago rejected the idea that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could pick the best films of any given year, I have continued to be fascinated by the Oscar extravaganza and its voting process. Each of the films has a specific team to lobby for nominations,...
Entre les Murs [The Class], directed by Laurent Cantet. Synecdoche, New York, directed by Charles Kaufman Although the English title of Laurent Cantet’s seventh film, The Class, explicates the film’s subject, a Parisian school’s ninth grade class, it lacks the greater symbolism of...
Battle in Seattle, directed by Stuart Townsend. Battle in Seattle has gained more press exposure than the average independent film due to its controversial setting: the riots and demonstrations attended by over 50,000 at the WTO conference in Seattle, Washington in 1999. And then there...
