lucy liu

Presence

by
Chloe in a dark room

There are big Steven Soderbergh movies and small Steven Soderbergh movies. Presence is the latest of the small ones, stacking up alongside Let Them All Talk and Unsane as another fascinating experiment in Soderbergian minimalism. Between starry, big-budget affairs like Oceans 11 or Contagion, in his smaller movies this master of technique sets himself film-making challenges, much as Hitchcock did with the likes of Rope or Lifeboat, perhaps also inspired by Lars Von Trier’s concept of “obstructions” (self-installed hurdles designed to jump-start the creative process). Soderbergh shot Let Them All Talk guerrilla-style, on board a cruise ship while it went about its regular business with paying customers. Quite a feat considering the cast … Read more

Old Guy

by
Wihlborg and Dolinski

Old Guy should be a good film but isn’t. Thanks to someone somewhere along the line deciding to funny things up. Not that the funny doesn’t have its moments. Take the opening scene, of an old guy with a big floppy grey moustache at a rave full of young people. Smiling ecstatically and throwing shapes, he’s caught up in the heady moshiness of it all. The camera spins. The music pumps. At a certain point the old dude clambers onto the stage to get chummy with the DJ. Only to be immediately escorted off the stage again by bouncers, though he’s punching the air in delight at having stormed the citadel. The fact … Read more

Charlie’s Angels

by
Cameron Diaz has her disco moment in Charlie's Angels

Good god this film got some bad negative publicity when it came out. I’m really not sure why. Of course it’s not Ingmar Bergman, but it’s not trying to be. What it is trying to be is a light and frothy, giddy and bubbly pastiche of the Seventies adventure series – which was the TV equivalent of that poster of the tennis woman scratching her bum. Perhaps naysayers were all still carrying a torch for Farrah Fawcett, the star of the original who left after one season to parlay her TV fame into a cinematic career. That didn’t work too well for her. Taking the Farrah role in McG’s film (perhaps the naysayers … Read more