film
Friday, 1 June 2018 / film, review
Forgotten Film Friday: After Dark, My Sweet
Back before Jason Patric was fighting for dads’ rights, he was busy brooding in James Foley’s sun-bleached noir. A poetic and strangely hypnotic take on the classic genre, After Dark, My Sweet is a slow-boiling poker game of a film.
Patric’s drifter, Collie, hot out of the mental institute, is picked up by alcoholic widow Fay (Rachel Ward) in a bar. Allowing him to live in a trailer at the bottom of her dried up yard, the pair soon become caught up in a kidnapping plot. Orchestrating the clumsy scheme is Uncle Bud, played with creepy flair by Bruce Dern. When the trio finally manage to steal the right child, things quickly disintegrate and they begin to question their trust in each other.
Patric gives the performance of his career as the mixed up ex-boxer; the shrewdness and aptitude for violence Collie represses fights to break out from under his veil of restraint and dim-witted sensitivity. Ward, the femme fatale to his smoldering anti-hero, is as alluring and tragic as the noir heroines that precede her. The sunny colour palette and Palm Springs setting freshen up the moody, paranoid tones and taut sexual tension that pervade the narrative. A feverishly sensuous film that artfully taps into human loneliness, After Dark, My Sweet has been overlooked for too long. This is an absolute gem and a solid entry in the neo-noir genre.
Thursday, 12 January 2017 / culture, film, writing
Film preview: Stand by Me
Last summer marked the 30th anniversary of one of my favourite films, Stand By Me. To celebrate, Liverpool arts centre FACT held a screening. I wrote a little something for their blog back in July, and completely forgot to post about it here!
Awarded the prestigious honour of being the first Stephen King adaption he didn’t try to quash, Stand By Me follows four young boys as they go on a mission to discover a dead body and get on television. Like any good coming-of-age film, however, the real story is not found in the plot but the journey.
A true ode to American boyhood, the film shines a sensitive spotlight on the crucial stage of pre-adolescence when everything seems uncertain. For the four protagonists, that’s the last weekend of summer before they enter junior high school [...read more on the FACT blog]
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