At One Fell Swoop I Dreamed Myself into Drifting Cities

My latest article for EFS Publications focuses on a couple of Michael Higgins's 'ghost features' - ethereal, ambiguous, contemplative, visually immersive works that, inter alia, explore the elusive nature of cinema and haunt the viewer long after being watched or rather, experienced. 

 

"... At One Fell Swoop takes the viewer on a mesmerizing, mind-altering journey through time and space, across the misty subconscious periphery of an unnamed hero..."

 

"... Equally fascinating and phantasmal, not to mention as hard to describe as its spiritual predecessor is a meta-fantasy (for lack of a better term) Drifting Cities..."

 

To read the article in its entirety, click the link below:

At One Fell Swoop I Dreamed Myself into Drifting Cities

Still shots from
At One Fell Swoop (2015)
Drifting Cities (2017)

Have a Nice Day (Jian Liu, 2017)

 ☼☼☼☼☼☼☼(☼) out of 10☼

Darkly witty, bitterly cynical, socially conscious and relentlessly bleak (think steely gray skies looming over some grimy, decrepit town), Jian Liu's sophomore offering Have a Nice Day (Hao ji le) appears as a slightly improved reworking of his 2010 feature debut Piercing I, and that is a crudely and sparsely, yet stylishly visualized piece of satirical pop-art neo-noir dressed in drab and 'dirty' colors, voiced in deadpan manner, occasionally lifted by cool soundtrack and rife with unsympathetic low-lives who fall victims of their greed, simple-mindedness, as well as of socialist capitalism embodied by a bag loaded with 'Maos'.

(The film is available for rent or purchase at Vimeo on Demand.)

Batman Ninja (Junpei Mizusaki, 2018)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼(☼) out of 10☼

Gathering all-star Gotham baddies from Poison Ivy to (sumo) Bane to Gorilla Grodd, following a campy no-brainer time-travelling screenplay based on 'rule of cool' and replete with cheesy one-liners, borrowing from just about every anime trope you could possibly imagine when thinking about the clash of feudal Japan with modern technology, and boasting sharp voice-acting, sweeping musical score and absolutely jaw dropping animation especially during the mid-section which perfectly mimics aquarelle art, Batman Ninja is the complete opposite of Junpei Mizusaki's earliest directorial effort (The Poem of Collected Sunlight, a meditative segment of 2005 omnibus Zoo) - it is a loud, invigorating, self-parodic, no-holds-barred and highly entertaining romp that bursts with colors and takes itself as seriously as the Joker.

Dreamplosion Inside the Cloud of Skin

With my fourth article for EFS Publications, I open my mind wider and take a deep dive into the turbid sea of Maximilian Le Cain's and Vicky Langan's psychological inwardness, in an attempt to find representative artefacts and bring them to the surface. In other words, a few thoughts on Le Cain's solo feature debut, Cloud of Skin (2015), and his latest and most accomplished collaborative effort with Langan, Inside (2017). Read the full article here:

Dreamplosion Inside the Cloud of Skin

 

Still shot from Cloud of Skin (Maximilian Le Cain, 2015)

Mary and the Witch's Flower (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2017)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼(☼) out of 10☼

Part delightful coming-of-age story, part sly meditation on the fallible nature of science (or rather, scientists), and part self-reflexive parable about transition, studio Ponoc's debut feature more than compensates for the silence of its 'parent studio' Ghibli, boasting superb traditional animation, charming voice cast and sweeping musical score, proving Yonebayashi (The Secret World of Arrietty, When Marnie Was There) as a capable director and weaving familiar elements into an endearing and electrifying fantasy which seeps with magic from its every pore and features one of the craziest lines in the history of anime:

"If we call virtual reality worlds from the Interbaila language "turtle" and the approximate value of magic in the ancient Eltel language "crane", which of the two do you think is the more effective approach in the terms of Alphalabozome nucleic acid anti-Entatium reaction? The turtle or crane?"

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2017)

☼☼☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

 

Even though it delivers the astonishing visuals coupled with razor sharp editing and features a powerhouse performance by Joaquin Phoenix whose wide shoulders in rests upon, You Were Never Really Here is never really engaging during its short, but seemingly excruciatingly long running time, and not to mention that - in its relentless atmosphere of hopelessness and over-psychologization of the world-weary (anti)hero - it often feels a bit ridiculous, like some Steven Seagal-starring thriller attempting to be deep and poetic.

Atoosa Pour Hosseini: The Art of Memory Weaving

"Iranian-born, Dublin-based visual and performing artist Atoosa Pour Hosseini could be called ‘a memory weaver’ of the Experimental Film Society. The ‘memories’ which she gently weaves into dreamlike, crystalline existence are as fragile and volatile as one might assume, yet they possess the undeniable quality of timelessness, whether they are ‘captured’ on 8mm tape or by a digital camera. Diving into the indefinite space formed out of their inner or rather, intrinsic luminosity gives the viewer a liberating sense of omnipotent illusion, and of being one with the vast otherness..."

 

Read my full article on the official page of EFS Publications.

 

 Still Shot from Antler (2018) 

Moving Image by Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Sound by Karen Power.

Produced by Experimental Film Society

& Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland.