The Big Picture Magazine
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]