Continuing on from yesterday where great British comedy sat alongside Turkish
slow cinema in our countdown of the best films from 13 - 6, here are our top five films of 2014.
Not exact matches
Temperatures may be dipping but the crop top trend shows no signs of
slowing down, as proved by Katie Aselton on the red carpet at ArcLight
Cinemas in Hollywood, California for the «Drinking Buddies» screening yesterday evening.
An unfazed tough guy walking away from an massive explosion
in slow motion, it's a tipping point reached long ago — this sequence has become a well - worn cliché
in the visual vocabulary of pop culture even beyond
cinema.
Stylistically, First Reformed is shot and edited like an art movie, its look and tone aligned with the chilly minimalism of the «
slow cinema» Schrader has theorized and canonized
in his work as a critic.
Already widely cited and used
in courses
in film studies, film genre, and art and avant garde film, this updated edition situates «Transcendental Style», forty - five years later, as part of a larger movement
in post-war
cinema, the
Slow Cinema movement.
But
in his new introduction, his observations about
slow cinema from Tarkovsky to Kiarostami to Tarr are every bit as compelling as his earlier insights into film noir.»
Though it has a lot of fun playing with slasher tropes and
cinema in general (showing the way Max and her friends are affected by elements like musical cues, monochromatic flashback sequences and
slow motion within the fictional movie), the film isn't funny or scary enough, ultimately becoming a victim of its own satire due to its insistence on preserving the genre's traditionally bad acting and writing.
As an offering of «
slow cinema,» Vandendriessche is no Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and though this film's strength ironically resides
in its digital photography, Vandendriessche lacks the natural intuitiveness for his images to leave any lasting impact beyond their aesthetic assuredness.
The visual splendor of Zack Snyder is on full display, and what a magnificent looking piece of
cinema it is, as the director does well playing somber and
slow during the first hour - plus of build - up, only to finally get a chance to let it all rip
in grand fashion for a lengthy showdown between godlike beings battling it out on Earth for the fate of two separate races.
Fluk's compositions are at once chilly and sensual, with a European art
cinema buff's attention to bodies, and there are lovely moments throughout: James and Jonah
in a swimming hole, scanning the water's surface
in search of fish; James and Sam's regret - soaked
slow dance at a community center social; a tracking shot that trails Jessica through a grassy field as she looks back teasingly at the camera.
So I'm going with Apichatpong Weerasethakul's folkloric
slow cinema romance
in the upset.
Years from now, director Ava DuVernay will continually be referenced for a dizzying amount of incredible firsts (many of which unfortunately serve as a reflection of the tiresome and
slow progression allowing for varied perspectives
in popular English language
cinema).
Speedsters on screen have been well - established through ultra
slow motion since the breakout Quicksilver scene
in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Zack Snyder's introduction of The Flash into
cinema follows the same template.
In the case of
cinema,
slow motion has been widely used as a poetic device to accentuate and invigorate moments that need to be highlighted, whether for storytelling or purely aesthetic... Read more»
The college experience has long been a favored stomping ground
in cinema, and it shows no sign of
slowing down.
And I wanted it to be a movie that indulged
in my own affection for
slow cinema.
When a film's opening shot is of a snail oozing across the screen
in its own sweet time, you know you're
in for some seriously
slow cinema.
THE BLU - RAY DISC by Walter Chaw Where zombies
in American
cinema seem to have risen with televangelism and its
slow - moving white people promising salvation
in the life of a sheep (
in that sense, they're really just another iteration of the Body Snatcher archetype),
in Italy they transmogrified, following the success of Romero's Dawn of the Dead there, into analogies for romance - gone - sour.
Peggy's relationships were a driving factor of the show, and while the second season's love triangle may have
slowed down certain episodes, the character's ability to make allies out of enemies harkens back to classic hero tropes
in action
cinema.
Indeed, movies and the wonder they inspire, «like seeing dreams
in the middle of the day,» are central to the story, and Selznick expresses an obvious passion for
cinema in ways both visual (successive pictures, set against black frames as if projected on a darkened screen, mimic
slow zooms and dramatic cuts) and thematic (the convoluted plot involves director Georges Méliès, particularly his fanciful 1902 masterpiece, A Trip to the Moon.)
Essential reading this weekend — boredom and dystopia
in slow cinema, the return of London's Hayward Gallery and the dark drawings of Gus Bofa