Screen Machine

Feature

The Terror of the Rom Com

I recently endured While You Were Sleeping, a 1995 romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock. Sandy B. Bullock works at a toll booth at a grey Chicago train station; she is very lonely, and wears beanies because she is sad. Her day is brightened by the smile of an attractive businessman (Peter Gallagher, whom we now recognize as yummy daddy Sandy from The OC). One freezing Christmas morning, Bullock and Yummy Daddy have the station to themselves, until two muggers arrive. In awesomely incongruent Jersey accents (I do believe this film is set in Chicago): Mugger 1 taunts, “Noice Jaaaaket.” Mugger 2 corroborates, “Meeeeehhhry Krysmussss.” Yummy daddy falls on the tracks! Bullock saves Yummy Daddy’s life by rolling him out of the way of the oncoming train. → continue reading

Reviews

L.A. Zombie

Walking through the little streets of Melbourne – trying impossibly to find the location of a poorly signed club from a hastily scrawled map – while ever wondering if the night’s film will even make it to the screen, one cannot help but be reminded – in the heat of this excitement – of that astute observation once made by Georges Bataille: that “the successful transgression…maintains the prohibition in order to benefit by it”. → continue reading

Inception

Inception operates at the cutting edge of contemporary narrative comprehension, spectatorial skill and processing speed: a position that will diminish, without fail, over time. But for now, raising this bar is a film that incites as much contempt (or at least, misunderstanding) as devotion. → continue reading

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