amateur review space

Fifteen Dogs (Written by André Alexis)/2015 This is a gem of a book by Toronto based writer André Alexis. One day the gods Apollo and Hermes ha ve a bet : what if dogs had the intelligence of humans? Will they be happier? The two wage a bet for a year of servitude on whether any of them would die happy.   What follows is both a sweet and hilarious account of fifteen dogs building a small civilisation. Initially, from my anthropocentric perspective, the novel seemed like an existentialist satire. These dogs were a metaphor for the human condition. When the dogs gain intelligence and become self-aware, they realise they are no longer like other dogs. Some try to maintain their old way of life because they feel that it is not ‘natural’ to be who they are. Others go on to philosophise, recite poetry, ponder about the world, get into politics: everything I would associate with natural human behaviour.   On further reading however I realised that humans and dogs are not...

Mississippi Grind (Directed by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden)/2015 Mississippi Grind is a film that looks at a chance encounter between two men and how it unfolds as the pair goes on an adventure. Curtis (Ryan Reynolds) is fun, outgoing, handsome and charismatic. Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) is meek, quiet, suspicious and seems tired. They have one thing in common and that is gambling. However, for Curtis gambling is a means to an end, to live comfortably without having to commit to employment;  he leads a nomadic life between various relationships and locations. For Gerry, gambling is IT. It has consumed him completely; he has no family or friends although it seems that he used to.  He is paralysed by thoughts of gambling or getting money to gamble. Gerry takes no pleasure in material wealth resulting from gambling nor any other aspects of life.  Ben Mend elsohn does a stirling job of portraying this shameful and miserable (yet vulnerable) character. Curtis is both...

Barry Lyndon by Stanley Kubrick was the first film I loved. It was the first time I watched a film and repeated scenes on YouTube for pure aesthetic joy. Some of the scenes are so beautiful that they stand alone as pieces of art in their own right without needing to be appreciated in the context of a story. In a way, some scenes can be appreciated as if they were videos to the Schubert tracks that play in the background; music that never had videos but is deserving of something as special as what Kubrick had to offer. The aesthetic of the film was so important to Kubrick that he had to get a special camera lenses from NASA that would work with candle-light. Only candle-light could capture the realities of 18th century lighting and provide something delicate and haunting enough to make the visual statement that Kubrick was after. The story is about a rogue opportunist called Redmond Barry. Barry comes from the countryside of Ireland and through a series of adventures and devious act...

Natural Born Killers does not make any pretence at subtlety. From the very beginning it screams out at the audience and doesn’t relent until the end. It is a message sent to the viewer in a whirlwind of colours and violence. The main characters are Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis). They start by running away after murdering Mallory’s parents and eventually go on a murder spree across the United States. The most overt theme throughout the movie is the role the media plays in our lives. We are shown in an exaggerated fashion how excessively violent behavior is normalized by the media. The most intense and horrific example of this is when the female lead Mallory is seen to be sexually abused by her father, but the scene plays out in the style of a sitcom. This doesn’t happen in real life though, so what is the point the movie is making? Maybe it is symbolic of what was happening in the victim’s mind or it shows how something so disgusting can be packaged in a differ...

The Visiting Privilege (Written by Joy Williams)/2015 I never really saw the point of short stories nor could I see the difference between short stories and novels. I thought short-stories were just short novels. However I have recently been enlightened by reading American author Joy Williams’ work The Visiting Privilege. The Visiting Privilege is a collection of Joy Williams' new and old short stories set mostly among people living in rural America. Joy Williams stories are generally set in a humble background with simple people leading quiet lives. However they also capture the deeper and darker aspects of human mind that is drastically contrasted by peaceful and natural setting; voyeurism, domination, manipulation, abandonment – some intentionally, some driven by unconscious desires. There is often unsettling and disturbing feeling to her stories that you can’t quite comprehend; they have the eeriness of a holiday house out in the middle of nowhere. I think she achie...

What Happened, Miss Simone? (Directed by Liz Garbus)/2015 What Happened Miss Simone covers the life and work of the queen of the Blues and Soul, Nina Simone. Nina Simone got into music from an early age firstly to train as a classical pianist and later to provide income for her family. Due to her intense piano training, she had a relatively isolated life from children her age. This perhaps had a lasting impact in her figuring out her identity. Also it seemed that many of the people closest to her were white (her piano teacher and later her guitarist) and Nina came into the civil rights debate quite late in her time and did not fully grasp the concept as she was growing up. For her, engaging with the discussions on racial discrimination helped her to understand how she felt about herself and the world she was in. While she supported civil rights movement wholeheartedly she did not particularly play a leading role in it which was surprising considering her stature in the music sc...

Before Midnight (Directed by Richard Linklater)/2013 This film is the final of the trilogy by Richard Linklater. It explores the themes of love and the fading nature of a long-term relationship. Jesse and Celine are the central characters of Linklater's romantic tale that spanned over a decade. Jesse left his wife and son and chose to start a new relationship with Celine 18 years ago. Fast forward to today’s time, Jesse and Celine are on a holiday on a Greek island with their young daughters and troubled by the battle with Jesses's ex-wife for the custody of his son . Early in the film we see the quotidian grind of the long term partners: work, children, planning, logistics etc. etc as if the earlier times of their relationship have melted away into a rose-tinted past. At dinner, Jesse, Celine and their friends discuss love and relationships. We see people dancing around the topic of love: the rational human-beings at the table are unwilling to come out and openly a...