Peter Machen on ‘Savages’

Posted on September 7, 2012 by admin
Film: Savages
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Oliver Stone
Screenwriters: Shane Salerno, Don Winslow, Oliver Stone
Starring: Blake Lively, Benicio del Toro, Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Salma Hayek, John Travolta.
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥½

Savages, the new film from Oliver Stone, begins with disturbing images of decapitated bodies. Broadcast from a web cam, the images are familiar in tone and content, echoing televised images from the American War in the Middle East. The images are not however from a war-torn territory, but from Mexico, where the drug trade has escalated and spilled over into marijuana territory, a traditionally chilled marketplace whose supreme rulers are Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and Ben (Aaron Johnson), two friends who produce not just the best weed in town, but the finest marijuana on the planet, and whose main market happens to be in Mexico. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘The Campaign’

Posted on September 6, 2012 by admin
Film: The Campaign
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Starring: Will Ferrel, Zach Galifianakis, Dylan McDermott, John Lithgow, Dan Aykroyd
Director: Jay Roach
Screenwriters: Chris Henchy, Shawn Harwell
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥

Given the enormous potential for surrealism and absurdity, it’s an oddly remarkable fact that there are very few American films which take American politics as their subject matter, and odder still that very few of them are comedies. The Campaign, the new Will Ferrel movie, directed by Jay Roach and produced by Zach Galifianakis, who also co-stars, is a middling if vaguely entertaining addition to this tiny genre. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Total Recall 2012’

Posted on August 31, 2012 by admin
Film: Total Recall
Country: USA/Canada
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Len Wiseman
Screenwriters: Kurt Wimmer, Mark Bomback
Starring: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel
Review: Peter Machen
♥½

Time really does fly. It has now been more than two decades since Arnold Schwarzenegger deadpanned his way through Paul Verhoeven’s accessible, intelligent and beautifully styled science fiction classic Total Recall. Which, in the franchise-obsessed world of Hollywood, means it’s time not for a re-release, but for a remake. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’

Posted on August 24, 2012 by admin
Film: Beasts of the Southern Wild
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Benh Zeitlin
Screenwriters: Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin
Starring: Quvenzhane Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥♥½

Beasts of the Southern Wild is one of the most remarkable films I’ve seen in many years. One of the big hits of this year’s Durban International Film Festival, the film tells the story of six-year old Hush Puppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) and the rag-tag community she lives with in ‘the Bathtub’, a Louisiana bayou sealed off from the mainland by a levee built to keep the water out. Continue reading →

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Benh Zeitlin – Beast it! Beast it! Beast it!

Posted on August 24, 2012 by admin
Peter Machen speaks to director Benh Zeitlin about his ground-breaking film Beasts of the Southern Wild.

The extraordinary film Beasts of the Southern Wild tells the apocalyptic story of 6-year old Hush Puppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) who lives with her distant but loving alcoholic father among a group of outsiders in a bayou in Southern Louisiana named the Bathtub. From Hush Puppy’s perspective, the universe is a fragile web that depends on everything fitting together just right. Faced with rising water levels in the bayou, she imagines the melting ice caps delivering vast shelves of ice into the sea and mythical horned beasts named Aurochs arising from the ice. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Ted’

Posted on August 24, 2012 by admin
Film: Ted
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Seth McFarlane
Screenwriters: Seth McFarlane, Alec Sulkin, Wellesley Wild
Starring: Marky Mark, Mila Kunis
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥

Despite the fact that I’m not a big fan of Seth McFarlane’s hit animated series Family Guy, I was looking forward to his debut feature film Ted – not because I thought that it would be particularly magnificent, but because I imagined that it would represent something of a break from the endless production line of generic mainstream Hollywood fare that occupies our movie theatres. And while Ted disappoints by towing a narrative line that is utterly familiar, its blend of absurdity and profanity provides nearly two hours of engaging hilarity. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Bully’

Posted on August 17, 2012 by admin
Film: Bully
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2011
Director: Leigh Hirsch
Screenwriters: Leigh Hirsch, Cynthia Lowe
Starring: Ja’Meya Jackson, Kelby Johnson, Londa Johnson, Bob Johnson, Alex Libby, Jackie Libby
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥♥

The documentary Bully, which opens at cinemas next Friday, provides an intimate account of bullying in the American school system. Book-ended by interviews with the father of Tyler Long who hung himself in his bedroom cupboard after years of torment, the film tells the story of five American families whose lives have been pretty much destroyed by bullying at school and the general lack of response from educational authorities and society at large. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘Fuel’

Posted on August 16, 2012 by admin
Film: Fuel
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2011
Director: Josh Tickell
Screenwriter: Johnny O’Hara
Starring: Josh Tickell, Woody Harrelson, Jimmy Carter, George Bush, Naomi Klein
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥½

Fuel tells the story of the growth of the petrochemical industry – or what director Josh Tickell calls the petroleum military complex – over the course of the last 150 years. Filled with fascinated details and tinged with fact-based conspiracies, the film calls for a better world, a world in which we have changed our core energy supply from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, and particularly plant-based sources such as ethanol and bio-diesel. Continue reading →

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Morgan Spurlock – All Aboard for Comic Con

Posted on July 28, 2012 by admin
Peter Machen speaks to Morgan Spurlock, the director of Supersize Me, about Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Last Hope which premiered at this year’s Durban International Film Festival.

Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Last Hope is an affectionate account of the 2010 Comic-Con, a comic convention which has been taking place in San Diego annually since 1970. While Comic-Con has gradually become a major cultural event in the United States, it continues to be portrayed in the media as a giant gathering of geeks. I spoke to director Morgan Spurlock about the film, which follows various Comic Con-attendees, from dedicated fans, aspirant illustrators and costume designers to giants of the graphic novel form such as Stan Lee and Grant Morrison. By chronicling the full week of the convention, as well as the fans’ journey there, the film is as much a narrative film as it is a document of the event, making it a particularly engaging doccie. Continue reading →

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Peter Machen on ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

Posted on July 27, 2012 by admin
Film: The Dark Knight Rises
Country: USA/UK
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Christopher Nolan
Screenwriters: Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cottilard, Michael Caine and Matthew Modine
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥

From his breakthrough movie Memento onwards through to Insomnia, Inception and his first two Batman movies, director Christopher Nolan has been a director of extraordinary precision and control, even as he has navigated storylines of remarkable density and intensity while stamping  each film with his own slick but considered and distinctive visual style. He has become that rarest of Hollywood beasts, a big name director who is capable of directing blockbusters without foregoing his directorial vision. And so it pains me to point out that Nolan’s latest outing, The Dark Knight Rises, is a major disappointment that seems to acquiesce to all that is frustrating about the output of contemporary Hollywood. Continue reading →

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