The Big Picture Magazine
If there’s one sci-fi film that comes to mind at the mention of George Lucas, it’s Star Wars. And yet, six years before his grand space opera undeniably changed the course of the genre, Lucas gave us THX-1138, a lower key and much more cerebral piece of science fiction. Despite both commercial and critical failure […]
Paranoia is a commodity rich with cinematic potential, but few pictures have mined it with such bleak and powerful unease as Seconds (1966). Ostensibly a work of science fiction, John Frankenheimer’s chilling dystopian nightmare addresses themes that, if anything, are more timely now than they were in the so-called Swinging Sixties. Our fear of aging […]
When Robin Williams died in August 2014, the many tributes recognized his award-winning performances and beloved family films. Few mentioned his first big screen starring role as the title character in Popeye (Robert Altman, 1980). Since its release critics have dismissed Altman’s adaptation of E.C. Segar’s comic strip about the spinach-eating sailor as a catastrophic […]
It could be argued that the majority of Ralph Bakshi’s career encompasses the phrase ‘Brilliant Failure’, with his offbeat adult animations rarely reaching their true potential yet still remaining interesting enough to captivate a more forgiving and liberal audience. Bakshi’s ambitious adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings still stands out as his […]
Stuart Cooper’s dream-like interweaving of stunning archival footage with the fictional narrative of the training of a new recruit, Tom Beddows (Brian Stirner), won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1975, but Overlord (the codename for the D-Day landings) seemingly received little attention until Criterion recently issued it on Blu-ray. The film […]
Few images more powerfully evoke the stark reality of 21st Century city survival than the Sisyphean struggle of Pakistani immigrant Ahmad dragging his cart along the indifferent Manhattan streets in Rahim Bahrani’s mournfully poetic debut feature. It’s an image Bahrani revisits throughout the extraordinary Man Push Cart (2005) as Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi) toils away day […]
If they ever considered stopping by our planet, aliens should prepare themselves for a rough welcome if our exhaustive list of films featuring malevolent little green men is anything to go by. Aliens have been many things in the movies, but peaceful is rarely one of them. Even Steven Spielberg, who waved the flag for […]
World cinema’s hidden gems handpicked by the Big Picture. When I asked the writer/director of Tricks/Sztuczki, Andrzej Jakimowski, about the freshness and originality of his second feature film within the context of Polish cinema, and about any influences on his well-received sophomore effort, he replied that there were no conscious forebears to whom he wished […]
World cinema’s hidden gems handpicked by the Big Picture and well worth seeking out.