The Final Take with Parker Mott

Michael Shannon is "The Iceman".

“How do you feel about the people you killed?”
“I don’t.”
- HBO’s “The Iceman: Confessions of a Mafia Hitman”, 2001

That is the cold, remorseless response of Richard Kuklinski, the contract killer at the brutal centre of Ariel Vromen’s The Iceman. The title comes from Kuklinski’s media monicker, and while the name does not fall short of sensationalism it borders on dead accuracy too. He never blinked looking down the barrel of a gun, and he had even fewer reservations about pulling its trigger. (continue reading…)

Jeff Buckley (Badgely) tributing his father and releasing his voice to the world.

We all know the saying “like father, like son”, but it’s hard to imagine the pressures of being the son who had to be “like” Tim Buckley, the late musician whose legacy left an indelible mark on the folk music scene and also produced 9 studio albums, 8 live albums, and innumerable compilations. The son was Jeff Buckley, a skinny, pallid, and rumply-haired musician who in his early career was recognized for uncannily resembling his father. (continue reading…)

Jay Gatsby (DiCaprio) and Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) reunite in "The Great Gatsby".

The initial reactions to Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby, which opened this year’s Cannes Film Festival, are strangely similar to the ones of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s original 1925 book. Both works were first critically rebuked, respected only for a single redeeming quality: Luhrmann’s style and Fitzgerald’s prose. People complained that the latter’s characters were “marionettes” and in Luhrmann’s adaptation it can argued that the characters are merely dancing puppets of a cinematic pageantry. (continue reading…)

Don't go into "Room 237"...but "The Shining" still keeps its doors wide open.

The Shining is probably Stanley Kubrick’s most mind-boggling film, certainly not his best but not far from what its poster heralds as “a masterpiece of modern horror.” Watching the film for maybe the seventh time the other day – but the first ever on the big screen, in a gloriously crisp 35mm print at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox – the film registered to me as droll. Many scenes, thanks to Kubrick’s craftsmanship, sink their hooks in you, while others hang loosely with pin-dropping bemusement. (continue reading…)

P.K. (Gage Munroe) locks and loads "I Declare War".

I Declare War is a no-holds-barred coming-of-age drama that is more than just dipped in the realm of fantasy. It exists, almost wholly, through the eyes and in the minds of several feral youngsters as they compete in a game of war in the woods (shot in Orange Valley, Scarborough over the course of 20 days). Yes, this is “Canadian” soil but directors Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson aren’t – ‘scuse the stereotype – making any apologies. (continue reading…)

Sidekicks: Robert Downey, Jr. and Don Cheadle face-off against the ruthless Mandarin in "Iron Man 3".

Iron Man 3 marks the first Marvel blockbuster of the summer (and, assumedly, a box office wonder), thus detonating the big bang of Hollywood spectacle and action-oriented narrative sure to disperse across the multiplexes these next coming months. The Marvel movies are typically theme-park rides, built on a grand scale and meant simply to thrill (Iron Man 2’s motif use of ACDC’s “Shoot to Thrill” was thereby apt). (continue reading…)

The first time: a not-so intimate moment in the many first sexual encounters in the poignant "Just About Love".

Lola Doillon’s visual style in Just About Love (2007) is admirably observational with how it follows the film’s characters and naturally shows them interacting with their environment. This style is predominantly manifested in tracking shots, a technique that fosters an inherent intimacy amongst the characters, because it shows they are spatially close, coming in and out of the frame concurrently. (continue reading…)

The famously garish Trevi Fountain scene in "La Dolce Vita".

There is an important irony that Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (“The Sweet Life” – 1960) signifies a transition for Italian cinema, while its protagonist Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) is ostensibly in one himself. The first refers to La Dolce Vita as Fellini’s departure from Italian neorealism and themes of salvation and grace within a bleak Italian social reality. The second – ultimately the consequence of the first – indicates Marcello’s fruitless stroll through a new Italian reality of stardom and media consumption. The social reality was just as bleak, but it was adorned by Marcello’s self-gratifying, insatiable, and ostensibly pleasurable search for “the sweet life”. (continue reading…)

Charlotte Rampling.

In “Does a Long-Term Relationship Kill Romantic Love?”, Bianca P. Acevedo and Arthur Aron argue that “romantic love – with intensity, engagement, and sexual interest – can last. Although it does not usually include obsessional qualities of early stage love, it does not inevitably die out or at best turn into companionate love – a warm, less intense love, devoid of attraction and sexual desire” (59). (continue reading…)

Rachel Weisz is the unwavering, intelligent Hypatia in "Agora".

Alejandro Amenabar’s Agora is a fitting way to wrap up this course, because it emulates many of the studied peplum tropes, in order to tell a Roman epic that is convincingly cerebral in nature. As the late critic Roger Ebert wrote: “I went to Agora expecting an epic with swords, sandals, and sex. I found swords and sandals, some unexpected opinions about sex, and a great deal more.” (Ebert) Ebert indicates that Agora challenges the contemporary preconceived notion, as a result of Hollywood action bombast like Clash of the Titans and Immortals, that peplum films automatically involve a robust male hero with a gorgeous woman tucked at his side, and plenty of chariot races to carry us along to the conclusion. (continue reading…)