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Feature Screengem

Screengem: Del Griffith’s Travel Trunk in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987)

This article contains spoilers – read at your own risk! “What did I do to wind up with this guy?” sighs a bemused Neal Page midway through John Hughes’ Thanksgiving-set comedy Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Anyone of the belief that things in life are sent to try us will conclude that Neal’s uptight advertising executive’s […]

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Feature Thousand Words

Wim Wenders, Paris, Texas and the Great American Roadtrip

There is a fleeting scene about 8 minutes into Wim Wenders’ heartbreaking but life-affirming Paris, Texas that has stayed with me ever since I first saw it twenty-odd years ago. The scene is of Walt Henderson (Dean Stockwell) parked up at a gas station, checking a map which is propped up on the hood of his […]

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Brilliant Failure Reviews

Brilliant Failure: The Congress (Ari Folman, 2013)

Simply scrolling onto The Congress’ official website gives a very accurate depiction of Ari Folman’s feature. One is presented with an outlandish, gyrating mosaic of film clips; enough to make anyone recoil at its unrelenting visual assault. The colours are all too vibrant and little sense can be made of the story being told. The […]

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Lost Classic Reviews

Lost Classic: Prince Avalanche (David Gordon Green, 2013)

There were the trails. Then there were the rails. Then there was the road. In David Gordon Green’s Prince Avalanche there is the road. This is the road movie – literally. Two men restore, rebuild, and re-imagine the road following a sweeping, tragic natural disaster. Across the course of the film, they travel eight miles physically and, like in all […]

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Feature Screengem

Screengem: The gnome in Amelie

Everyone dreams about travelling the world and seeing the sights, and in Amelie, as Georgina Guthrie tells us, a very unusual globetrotter got to do just that. Fairy tales inform us that the gnome is a reclusive figure, content to hide in the safety of his underground burrow. How apt, then, that suburbia adopted him […]

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Feature Thousand Words

Parting Shots: Travel by Map

Tom Bielby highlights how a trick used to save filmmakers time and money, as well as keeping narrative momentum, has recently reached the point of parody. Travelling the world (or even just heading across a city) can sometimes prove to be very tricky business, particularly for film directors when it comes to the demanding task […]