Tag / bob balaban

by Jaime Rebanal

Isle of Dogs – Review

✯✯✯✯½

Wes Anderson’s second animated feature film Isle of Dogs (which can be said out loud as “I love dogs”) is delightful in every sense of the word. For as easy as it is to admire the consistency of a filmmaker like Wes Anderson whether it be via his trademark visual style or his distinctively quirky sense of humour, his style will understandably not be for everyone’s tastes. Speaking only for myself, I’ve been a rather dedicated apologist for Wes Anderson’s work for I’ve yet to find myself actively disliking a film under his own name – because the way Wes Anderson allows his own trademarks to adapt so well under different forms of storytelling only goes to show more proof as to why he is truly among the most unique filmmakers of his own generation, for he is truly in a league of his own.

Continue reading →

by Jaime Rebanal

Close Encounters of the Third Kind – Review

✯✯✯✯✯

There’s a part of me that feels that where I’ve gone today is in part thanks to Steven Spielberg, because as I watch his films the way I do now there’s a line he blurs between what we can perceive as mere popcorn entertainment to something all the more beautiful. Films like Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark would have set an example for some among a few but Close Encounters of the Third Kind has only shown him at some of his most personal after having broken new ground with Jaws. If Jaws showed a side to Spielberg that blurred the lines between entertainment and art, then Close Encounters of the Third Kind presents another side of his work that embraces something all the more impactful: his own trademark sentimentality finds itself at its very best in here, it awed me at 12 years old and at 18 it still captivates me with the same impact that I can remember vividly.

Continue reading →

by Jaime Rebanal

Moonrise Kingdom – Review

✯✯✯✯✯

As far as critical success is concerned, Moonrise Kingdom is Wes Anderson’s most popular and for fans of the director it would be easy to see why this has stood atop all the rest. Although Rushmore still remains my favourite of his own work, Moonrise Kingdom showcases his own talents in arguably the most accessible manners for audiences of all sorts, but nevertheless it seems as if this is where he has only found the quirkiness that defined his own films working at its very best. Perhaps I’ve already come to the point that I’ve watched so much of his films enough to consider myself an apologist, but they’ve always worked with the same charms as he tells stories of all sorts. In just how it captures the joys and quirks of being a child, Wes Anderson has struck gold once again with Moonrise Kingdom by telling a whole other story on the inside here.

Continue reading →

by Jaime Rebanal

Ghost World – Review

✯✯✯✯✯

I knew far too many teenage girls like Enid. They were always closeted about their own interests because what we saw on the outside was the fact that they were always so cold and bitter about their place in life. They come from the supposed “ghost world,” and to everyone else they’re just invisible. I read Daniel Clowes’s comic during my own early high school years and something about Enid’s personality struck me as something that rang a tad too familiar. My own high school years have oftentimes left me within a state of disconnect from everything else that was happening around me, because I was always seen as the introverted freak who took no interest in most of what other teens seemed to like. It’s a particularly disturbing feeling that Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff found themselves capturing with such ease it’s uncanny.

Continue reading →