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Non-Review Review: Thunderbolt & Lightfoot

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Darren

I think that Thunderbolt & Lightfoot might be my favourite Michael Cimino film. Don’t get me wrong, of course. I acknowledge and appreciate the director’s work on The Deer Hunter, but it’s not a film I return to on a regular basis. It’s a thoughtful and powerful commentary on the Vietnam War, but it isn’t among my favourite explorations of that particular conflict. On the other hand, while it still has its own serious flaws, Thunderbolt & Lightfoot has a much lighter touch. It’s a film that offers a great deal of depth beneath a relatively accessible surface layer, serving as an exploration of seventies America, but one with significant hidden depths. However, despite his sophisticated work here, Cimino’s directorial début is not inaccessible and works quite well as a hybrid of the “road” and the “heist”movie genres, albeit with a great deal happening beneath the surface.

The road to nowhere?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Bridge, clinteastwood, Deer Hunter, eastwood, HTC Corporation, HTC ThunderBolt, jeff bridges, Korea, Lightfoot, Michael Cimino, Technology, Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, United States, Vietnam War | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Monsieur Lahzar

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2012.

Monsieur Lehzar is a truly splendid piece of film-making, and a superb addition to the “teacher and class” subgenre, adhering to the type of mood and atmosphere that one expects from that sort of uplifting film, but with a little added nuance or bite to give it the edge. Adapted by director Philippe Falardeau from the play Bashir Lazhar by Evelyne De la Chenelière, it’s an impressively engaging film. It deals with fairly hefty themes in a way that never feels weighed down, or to sombre – providing a cautiously, rather than blindly, optimistic outlook on life.

Class act...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Academy Award, art, Bashir Lazhar, Energy, Environment, Evelyne De la Chenelière, Falardeau, film, Filmmaking, Hanford Site, Monsieur Lazhar, Movie, non-review review, nuclear, Nuclear Waste, Philippe Falardeau, Quebec, Radioactive waste, review, Technology, United States Department of Energy | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Solaris

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Darren

Can you tell me what’s happening here?

I could tell you what’s happening, but I don’t know if it would really tell you what’s happening.

– Chris Kelvin and Snow

Soderbergh’s Solaris is bold, challenging, brilliant, chaotic, unstructured, clever, obtuse, dense, frustrating, unsatisfying and fascinating. Frequently at the same time. The director’s adaptation of Andrei Tarkovsky’s incredibly dense science-fiction feature might not necessarily be for everybody, but there’s enough substance here for eager audience members to chew on. A film subscribing to the idea that less is more, it seems to take more joy in posing questions than in answering them. This will obviously frustrate those viewers who dislike that sort of ambiguity.