Tag / john hurt

by Jaime Rebanal

‘Watership Down’ Review: A Haunting, Beautiful Tale of Survival Upon Certain Doom

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I remember first watching Watership Down in fifth grade under the assumption that it was a cute animated film about rabbits. If you were one who had watched Watership Down during your youth making that same mistake that I had made at the time, you would already have been left with frightening images in your head after your first viewing – yet it still presents itself as one of the most beautiful animated films of all time. Written and directed by producer Martin Rosen in his directorial debut, Watership Down beautifully translates the debut novel of Richard Adams to the big screen in the most imaginative sense possible, something unlike most other animated films of the era with many of the classics of Walt Disney Studios having preceded what Martin Rosen makes you witness in Watership Down.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Alien – Review

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Ridley Scott’s Alien remains one of the defining works in both the horror and science fiction genres, a film that, like any of the best of their genres, invented a whole new universe by starting small. From the many films that the Alien series has spawned, Ridley Scott’s original film still remains my favourite of the bunch for good reason. It remains my favourite because it shows how little is necessary in order to start a universe of its own from scratch. Although eventually this rule was broken by eventual sequels (as much as I love James Cameron’s Aliens), it’s already impossible to deny the impact that Ridley Scott’s original film would have left behind on science fiction and horror within years to come. In itself it would easily have been just a “haunted house movie in space,” but perhaps there’s a whole lot more that results in the final product actually turning out to be all the more clever.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Jackie – Review

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Pablo Larraín’s latest film, a biopic about Jacqueline Kennedy from the days after JFK’s death, is one of the year’s most frustrating films, one in the sense it feels far too much like an obscured portrait of its own subject. On one hand there’s a technically impressive feat that’s allowing itself to shine all the way through but somehow it seems that Pablo Larraín’s handling of the subject is just so alienating where it should be intriguing. My assumption was that if it were the point to get a grasp on what Jacqueline Kennedy was like after JFK’s death, it was one among many factors to why Jackie never finds itself working as well as it should. Rather instead, it just feels so empty and never moves out of the single spot it remains within.

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