SeuJorge Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Sundance Review: The Escapist
Filed under: Drama », Thrillers », Sundance », Theatrical Reviews », Festival Reports », Cinematical Indie »
Our post-modern age makes it easy (indeed, possibly too easy) to find takes or spins or twists on traditional stories or genre films; what's often harder is finding well-executed examples of those genres in the first place. (Put more bluntly, we've all seen plenty of recent ironic crime films or teen comedies -- but how few of those actually work as crime films or teen comedies?) The British film The Escapist, which made its North American debut at Sundance this year, not only works as a brilliant, twisting existential expansion of the traditional prison break film; it also works as a crackerjack example of the traditional prison break film. Brian Cox stars as Frank, a convict serving a life sentence; after hearing of his daughter's second overdose, he determines that he has to get out, he has to see her: "I have to make things right."
As played by Cox, Frank's hard to understand, but easy to like -- and the other way around, too. Cox is one of our best actors -- he's great in both high art and high trash, and The Escapist offers him a chance to work both ends of that divide. We watch, riveted, as Frank tries to break through the metaphorical wall around his feelings; we watch, riveted, as Frank tries to break through the literal walls keeping him from the outside. Frank's demeanor is pure prison -- a hot-forged alloy of defiance and resignation tempered by time -- but he's also more than just that facade.
Review: The House of Sand
Filed under: Drama », Foreign Language », New Releases », Tribeca », Sony Classics », Theatrical Reviews », New in Theaters », Cinematical Indie »
Sand is an easy metaphor for time, and a pretty obvious one, too, but that doesn't mean a film can't succeed despite milking the metaphor for all its worth. Stories set exclusively in the desert have a lot of sand to work with, after all, and not much else. The House of Sand, which takes place in the area of northern Brazil now known as Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, an area that isn't a desert but has many of the characteristics of one, shows that living amidst sand and more sand can be so monotonous that perhaps counting the grains to pass the time is sometimes all one has.
Of course, no one actually counts sand in the film, but the grains are used to show time passing, whether in such a blatant shot as the close-up of sand trickling down the side of a dune or in more narrative-essential imagery like the shifting appearance of the landscape. Fortunately the film doesn't actually consist of people sitting around waiting for the scenery to change, either. Instead, The House of Sand plays out over the course of almost sixty years, and its progression of time is primarily, and more significantly, marked by man's advancements in science and technology, with their ability to seemingly make the world, and the universe, smaller.
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