Category Archive: Drama Film
A Delicate Balance
(dir. Tony Richardson) (1973) One Friday night a tense little New England family receives a surprise visit from a couple of old friends. It seems they were at home and suddenly ‘became frightened’ for no apparent reason. So they decide to move in with their oldest friends, opening up some old, and some still warmly moist, scars, testing the limits and concept of true friendship. More delectable, drunken, hate-filled east coast dummy-spits from Edward Albee. The Varnished Culture always draws the cat’s attention to what might happen to him if he ever “doesn’t like us anymore”.
Continue Reading →Dead Man
(dir. Jim Jarmusch) (1996) Johnny Depp rides again, or should it be sails, into the sunset, only this time, weird works. [As Depp Indian films go, this is as good as The Lone Ranger is execrable…]
Continue Reading →Chinatown
(dir. Roman Polanski) (1974) Superior latter-day film noir, replete with sophisticated non-plot (something about diverting public water for private purposes), has Faye Dunaway getting away with scenery-chewing, due no doubt to difficulties with character (‘She’s my daughter! She’s my sister! She’s my daughter…’).
Continue Reading →Breaking Bad
(created by Vince Gilligan) (2008-2013) A high octane, cold-sweated, overheated, pretzel-plotted, prodigious, ragged and pitiless low tragedy, the best thing on television for years. LESLEY ADDS. No-one is redeemed. No-one is spared. It’s all a murky brown and very, very nasty. Crime pays. No it doesn’t. Maybe it does. No, probably not. Oh I don’t know. Second only to the greatest TV drama series of all time – Edge of Darkness. (Note: see also the prequel, Better Call Saul)
Continue Reading →Bigger Than Life
cortisone
(dir. Nicholas Ray) (1956) Uber-normal 50s family has life turned on its head when Dad gets hooked on cortisone and starts wearing robes and a crown. It’s like The Brady Bunch meets Oliver Twist and it fairly crackles. James Mason’s great performance is almost too big for the film – you want him strait-jacketed only after he stabs everyone in the cast.
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