The Big Picture Magazine
There is a moral dilemma inherent in taking pictures of suffering. Famed war photographer Robert Capa once remarked that “It’s not always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the sufferings around one” and Larry Burrows, who covered the Vietnam war for Life magazine, often caught himself wondering if it […]
Three Resurrected Drunkards (Kaette kita yopparai, 1968) starts with a long sequence showing three young men enjoying themselves on a deserted sandy beach one sunny day. Their haircuts and clothes indicate that they belong to the beat generation, and their beige jackets are reminiscent of those worn by The Beatles for their concert at Shea […]
Psychological horror has long been the neglected offspring of a genre that too often falls back on lazy shocks, recycled storylines and dismembered body parts. Yet, it’s through this underused sub-genre that some of horror’s finest hours have emerged, not least of which the largely forgotten Jacob’s Ladder. Directed by Adrian Lyne, Jacob’s Ladder may […]
The Boston Phoenix may have predicted Peter Watkins’ potent philippic on the frightening consequences of unchecked power was a “cult hit waiting to happen – but 40 years after its controversial release, it’s still twiddling its thumbs waiting for the world to catch on. Watkins’ pioneering brand of radical pseudo-documentary filmmaking was always going to leave […]
Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) has become one of the most iconic bad guys in cinema history. With his penchant for quiet weaponry and disquieting conversation, the character takes on a mythic quality that reads to both the audience and the inhabitants of the film as an unstoppable force of evil, an angel of death, or, perhaps, […]
In the opening scenes of Patriot Games Jack Ryan foils an IRA plot to kill the Queen Mother’s cousin outside Buckingham Palace, preventing a car bomb from exploding and engaging in a lethal shoot-out with the terrorists. It is an exciting and involving moment, and sets up the revenge motive that drives the remainder of […]