In order not to lose, or rather, in order to not win, but to not win with integrity, this year Dr. Garth Twa is choosing winners who aren’t even nominated.
It’s Oscar time again, that annual humiliation of me getting it entirely wrong. I always lose this bingo game, whether I choose from my heart or from my spleen, it doesn’t matter. So I’ve decided to take a different strategy; in order not to lose, or rather, in order to not win, but to not win with integrity, I’m choosing winners who aren’t even nominated.
Best Actress
Who should win? Glenn Close.
It’s Oscar time again, that annual humiliation of me getting it entirely wrong. I always lose this bingo game, whether I choose from my heart or from my spleen, it doesn’t matter. So I’ve decided to take a different strategy; in order not to lose, or rather, in order to not win, but to not win with integrity, I’m choosing winners who aren’t even nominated.
Best Actress
Who should win? Glenn Close.
- 2/23/2019
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Garth Twa talks to Twin Peaks Deputy Chad Broxford about The Return, David Lynch and being an 'asshole'.
John Pirruccello is a new member of the Twin Peaks cast for season 3, The Return. He plays Chad Broxford, a villainous new deputy in the Twin Peaks Sheriff Department, corrupt and mean, and with criminal links to Benjamin Horne.
Gt: So what was it like getting the call for Twin Peaks, The Return?
John Pirruccello: It was exciting because I’ve been a fan from the original series.
John Pirruccello is a new member of the Twin Peaks cast for season 3, The Return. He plays Chad Broxford, a villainous new deputy in the Twin Peaks Sheriff Department, corrupt and mean, and with criminal links to Benjamin Horne.
Gt: So what was it like getting the call for Twin Peaks, The Return?
John Pirruccello: It was exciting because I’ve been a fan from the original series.
- 9/28/2018
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Twin Peak's Lucy Brennan talks to Dr. Garth Twa about The Return, Lynch and her dog Zeke.
Kimmy Robertson was indelible as Lucy, the receptionist at the Twin Peaks Sheriff Station. In Twin Peaks, The Return Lucy is still at her desk, and her romantic problems have settled down some and she is married—as seemed inevitable—to Deputy Andy Brennan. She was, in many ways, the nexus of pretty much all of the characters and events, having probably shared scenes with nearly every other actor…
Kimmy Robertson: Not everybody, no. Just about everybody who passed through the Sheriff’s station I did and everybody was there in that 17th hour of The Return. Seems like most of the people were in that conference room for that.
Garth Twa: Oh, the big climax of the new series!
Kimmy Robertson was indelible as Lucy, the receptionist at the Twin Peaks Sheriff Station. In Twin Peaks, The Return Lucy is still at her desk, and her romantic problems have settled down some and she is married—as seemed inevitable—to Deputy Andy Brennan. She was, in many ways, the nexus of pretty much all of the characters and events, having probably shared scenes with nearly every other actor…
Kimmy Robertson: Not everybody, no. Just about everybody who passed through the Sheriff’s station I did and everybody was there in that 17th hour of The Return. Seems like most of the people were in that conference room for that.
Garth Twa: Oh, the big climax of the new series!
- 9/28/2018
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Dr. Garth Twa chats to Dana Ashbrook about David Lynch, Bobby Briggs and returning to Twin Peaks
Dana Ashbrook played the iconic bad boy, Bobby Briggs, in the original series of Twin Peaks. 25 years later, he returns to play Bobby again, and the former opportunistic delinquent and arch-nemesis of authority has grown up to become, surprisingly, a deputy sheriff in the Twin Peaks police. Mellowed, perhaps, by the decades, and a failed marriage to his—married, at the time—sweetheart Shelly Johnson, he is still devastated by the murder of Laura Palmer.
Garth Twa: It seems that Twin Peaks has been a huge part of your life, is that correct to say?
Dana Ashbrook: You know, it was, it was a huge part of my life when I was about the age of 22 to 24, but I moved away and went on and did other things.
Dana Ashbrook played the iconic bad boy, Bobby Briggs, in the original series of Twin Peaks. 25 years later, he returns to play Bobby again, and the former opportunistic delinquent and arch-nemesis of authority has grown up to become, surprisingly, a deputy sheriff in the Twin Peaks police. Mellowed, perhaps, by the decades, and a failed marriage to his—married, at the time—sweetheart Shelly Johnson, he is still devastated by the murder of Laura Palmer.
Garth Twa: It seems that Twin Peaks has been a huge part of your life, is that correct to say?
Dana Ashbrook: You know, it was, it was a huge part of my life when I was about the age of 22 to 24, but I moved away and went on and did other things.
- 9/28/2018
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Director Tony Zierra talks to Dr. Garth Twa about the incredible story of Leon Vitali, the all-encompassing long-time assistant to Stanley Kubrick.
In 1974 an acclaimed young actor, Leon Vitali, had landed a major, career-changing role in a Stanley Kubrick movie. Already an acclaimed actor before Barry Lyndon—Vitali had an avid following from British TV, had been given prestigious stage offers, and his picture frequently featured on the cover of fan magazines—his experience on the film developed into an obsession (eventually an addiction) about the mechanics and nuances of filmmaking: specifically, the filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick.
In 1974 an acclaimed young actor, Leon Vitali, had landed a major, career-changing role in a Stanley Kubrick movie. Already an acclaimed actor before Barry Lyndon—Vitali had an avid following from British TV, had been given prestigious stage offers, and his picture frequently featured on the cover of fan magazines—his experience on the film developed into an obsession (eventually an addiction) about the mechanics and nuances of filmmaking: specifically, the filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick.
- 5/21/2018
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
In this season of awards and pantheonic enshrinement, Dr. Garth Twa remembers those films that were treated negligently, their merits left to fallow.
This year at the Vancouver International Film Festival and at the London Film Festival—and it happens every year—there were films that shone, or stunned, or made a profound impact. But now they are gone. What zeitgeist clockwork, what Jungian tides, lead some films to acclaim and Oscars—like, say, in recent years, Lenny Abrahamson’s The Room or Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, and rightfully so—while others sink and die like a forgotten Tamagotchi? There are some superb films in contention for awards this year, but three of the year’s best have been forgotten: The Meyerwitz Stories (New and Selected), possibly Noah Baumbach’s best film; A Ghost Story, by David Lowery, which was sublime, and something actually new under the sun; and Good Time...
This year at the Vancouver International Film Festival and at the London Film Festival—and it happens every year—there were films that shone, or stunned, or made a profound impact. But now they are gone. What zeitgeist clockwork, what Jungian tides, lead some films to acclaim and Oscars—like, say, in recent years, Lenny Abrahamson’s The Room or Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, and rightfully so—while others sink and die like a forgotten Tamagotchi? There are some superb films in contention for awards this year, but three of the year’s best have been forgotten: The Meyerwitz Stories (New and Selected), possibly Noah Baumbach’s best film; A Ghost Story, by David Lowery, which was sublime, and something actually new under the sun; and Good Time...
- 3/1/2018
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
John Carroll Lynch talks about his directorial debut Lucky, the final film of Harry Dean Stanton.
The BFI London Film Festival 2017 presented Lucky by director John Carroll Lynch. Lucky was the last film of Harry Dean Stanton, who died shortly before the screening. The film is, consciously or not, a tribute to Harry Dean, in one of the most candid, brave, quiet, simple, and iconic roles of a career that spanned seven decades.
It is less of a narrative than tag-team philosophising on mortality and existence, as Lucky visits his doctor, played by Ed Begley, Jr., meets a war veteran played by Tom Skerritt in a diner (they last met on film in the lunch room of the Nostromo in Alien), and drinks with various patrons at the Stagecoach Saloon and Grill, including David Lynch, who holds forth on the existential conundrum of his Awol tortoise. Despite the sense of...
The BFI London Film Festival 2017 presented Lucky by director John Carroll Lynch. Lucky was the last film of Harry Dean Stanton, who died shortly before the screening. The film is, consciously or not, a tribute to Harry Dean, in one of the most candid, brave, quiet, simple, and iconic roles of a career that spanned seven decades.
It is less of a narrative than tag-team philosophising on mortality and existence, as Lucky visits his doctor, played by Ed Begley, Jr., meets a war veteran played by Tom Skerritt in a diner (they last met on film in the lunch room of the Nostromo in Alien), and drinks with various patrons at the Stagecoach Saloon and Grill, including David Lynch, who holds forth on the existential conundrum of his Awol tortoise. Despite the sense of...
- 11/25/2017
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Before she sadly passed in 2015, Dr. Garth Twa spoke to Twin Peaks' iconic Log Lady.
Catherine E. Coulson had been a seminal part of the David Lynch cosmos, from backcombing Henry’s hair in Eraserhead to starring in his early short ‘The Amputee’ to providing Log Lady introductions to the syndicated episodes of Twin Peaks. It was a great privilege to have been able to speak with her before, very sadly, she passed away in September of 2015.
Garth Twa: You’ve know David Lynch for a long time…
Catherine E.
Catherine E. Coulson had been a seminal part of the David Lynch cosmos, from backcombing Henry’s hair in Eraserhead to starring in his early short ‘The Amputee’ to providing Log Lady introductions to the syndicated episodes of Twin Peaks. It was a great privilege to have been able to speak with her before, very sadly, she passed away in September of 2015.
Garth Twa: You’ve know David Lynch for a long time…
Catherine E.
- 5/19/2017
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Garth Twa chats briefly to Twin Peaks' Ronette Pulaski about trees and other things
For me, one of the most riveting moments in Twin Peaks was the image, in the pilot, of Ronette Pulaski, mute with fear and trauma, in tatters, walking over the railway trestle. She had escaped before she’d been murdered, though not before she’d been tortured, and damaged possibly beyond repair. She was the only one present when Bob killed Laura Palmer. That one image crystallized the breathtaking brutality and horror that was there, in the everyday landscape of Twin Peaks. Ronette Pulaski was played by Phoebe Augustine, and though her role wasn’t large—she spent most of the first season in a coma, or was seen in grainy black and white photos in the magazine ‘Flesh World’—it was iconic. And, intriguingly, she’s back for the new season, 25 years later. We...
For me, one of the most riveting moments in Twin Peaks was the image, in the pilot, of Ronette Pulaski, mute with fear and trauma, in tatters, walking over the railway trestle. She had escaped before she’d been murdered, though not before she’d been tortured, and damaged possibly beyond repair. She was the only one present when Bob killed Laura Palmer. That one image crystallized the breathtaking brutality and horror that was there, in the everyday landscape of Twin Peaks. Ronette Pulaski was played by Phoebe Augustine, and though her role wasn’t large—she spent most of the first season in a coma, or was seen in grainy black and white photos in the magazine ‘Flesh World’—it was iconic. And, intriguingly, she’s back for the new season, 25 years later. We...
- 5/18/2017
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Dr. Garth Twa sits down with the director of David Lynch: The Art Life
From his early work (the mixed media grand guignol of Fish Kit and Chicken Kit) to The Angriest Dog in the World, his weekly comic strip for the L.A. Reader in the 1990s (the same four frames of a black hypertensive dog choking himself at the extent of his leash, ‘a dog so angry he cannot move’), to his current output of abstract but deeply unnerving canvases, David Lynch has been a singular, accomplished artist. He is not a dabbler or hobbyist; he has never abandoned his first passion, his art, and film only emerged as a medium for his installations during art school—and like his painting, the films are often not figurative, but still affect the viewer as deeply as delta-wavelength dreams of dark business.
David Lynch: The Art Life is a feature-length...
From his early work (the mixed media grand guignol of Fish Kit and Chicken Kit) to The Angriest Dog in the World, his weekly comic strip for the L.A. Reader in the 1990s (the same four frames of a black hypertensive dog choking himself at the extent of his leash, ‘a dog so angry he cannot move’), to his current output of abstract but deeply unnerving canvases, David Lynch has been a singular, accomplished artist. He is not a dabbler or hobbyist; he has never abandoned his first passion, his art, and film only emerged as a medium for his installations during art school—and like his painting, the films are often not figurative, but still affect the viewer as deeply as delta-wavelength dreams of dark business.
David Lynch: The Art Life is a feature-length...
- 5/16/2017
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Sick Of It All director Brian McGuire sat down with Garth Twa and Simona Viackute for Pure Movies.
Brian McGuire returned to London Raindance Film Festival this year with his latest feature, Sick of It All, a noir-infused comedy based on The Little Prince (according to press materials—it’s more of all all-out genre-f*** with obsessional detours into style and irreverent glee). It’s a chance again for McGuire to make his own uncompromising hybrid indie movies, featuring his ensemble cast—made up of friends, family members, and, this time, the producer in the lead—and his own L.A.
Brian McGuire returned to London Raindance Film Festival this year with his latest feature, Sick of It All, a noir-infused comedy based on The Little Prince (according to press materials—it’s more of all all-out genre-f*** with obsessional detours into style and irreverent glee). It’s a chance again for McGuire to make his own uncompromising hybrid indie movies, featuring his ensemble cast—made up of friends, family members, and, this time, the producer in the lead—and his own L.A.
- 12/16/2016
- by Garth Twa and Simona Viackute
- Pure Movies
During the recent Raindance Film Festival, Thirsty director Margo Pelletier, Producer Lisa Thomas, and star Scott Townsend sat down with Garth Twa and Simona Viackute.
During the recent Raindance Film Festival, Thirsty director Margo Pelletier, Producer Lisa Thomas, and star Scott Townsend sat down with Garth Twa and Simona Viackute.
Thirsty is an utterly unique hybrid of West Side Story, A Star Is Born, and Outrageous!, with a healthy (odd adjective to use in this instance, I know) dash of Tennessee Williams, following the life of Scott Townsend and his creation of Thirsty Burlington, a character who performs a stunningly accurate Cher.
During the recent Raindance Film Festival, Thirsty director Margo Pelletier, Producer Lisa Thomas, and star Scott Townsend sat down with Garth Twa and Simona Viackute.
Thirsty is an utterly unique hybrid of West Side Story, A Star Is Born, and Outrageous!, with a healthy (odd adjective to use in this instance, I know) dash of Tennessee Williams, following the life of Scott Townsend and his creation of Thirsty Burlington, a character who performs a stunningly accurate Cher.
- 11/4/2016
- by Garth Twa and Simona Viackute
- Pure Movies
Tickled director David Farrier talks to Dr. Garth Twa about his remarkable documentary.
Spoiler alert: This interview references events from the documentary Tickled. Don’t read on if you don’t want to know what happens.
It was a cold Thursday night in Park City, Utah. The crowd had trudged through the snow up the steps of the Library Center Theatre where the Sundance Film Festival was presenting Tickled by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve: a documentary on ‘competitive endurance tickling’. We nestled in, ready to be entertained and amused, if nothing else. I mean, competitive endurance tickling? The amusement soon waned.
Farrier is a journalist in New Zealand specialising in the odd, the bizarre, the, well, entertaining and amusing. When he stumbled on videos of fit young men in athletic gear tickling other fit young men (only these ones were restrained, bound at the ankles and the wrists,...
Spoiler alert: This interview references events from the documentary Tickled. Don’t read on if you don’t want to know what happens.
It was a cold Thursday night in Park City, Utah. The crowd had trudged through the snow up the steps of the Library Center Theatre where the Sundance Film Festival was presenting Tickled by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve: a documentary on ‘competitive endurance tickling’. We nestled in, ready to be entertained and amused, if nothing else. I mean, competitive endurance tickling? The amusement soon waned.
Farrier is a journalist in New Zealand specialising in the odd, the bizarre, the, well, entertaining and amusing. When he stumbled on videos of fit young men in athletic gear tickling other fit young men (only these ones were restrained, bound at the ankles and the wrists,...
- 8/24/2016
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Chevalier, directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari and starring Vangelis Mourikis, Nikos Orphanos and Yorgos Pirpassopoulos. Written by Dr. Garth Twa. Greece is renowned for many things: it is the land of myth, of Dionysian revels, of octopuses hung like pantyhose on clotheslines to dry. It is the land of our first storytelling, birthplace of epics, of comedies, of tragedies; but not, until now, cinematic stories. As a film industry, there hasn’t been much to talk about except, of course, the exceptions, like Theodoros Angelopolous (Ulysses’ Gaze, 1995, Eternity and a Day, 1998—both won big at Cannes) and Costa-Gavras, who, really, made American movies, like Missing (1982) with Jack Lemmon, or Mad City (1997) with John Travolta, or French movies like Z (1969). ‘Greek’ films like Never On a Sunday (Jules Dassin, 1960) and Zorba the Greek (Michael Cacoyannis, 1964) were Greek fetishisation made palatable to tourists by having non-Greek lead actors being swarthy.
- 8/11/2016
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Dheepan, directed by Jacques Audiard and starring Jesuthasan Antonythasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby and Vincent Rottiers. Written by Dr. Garth Twa for Pure Movies. The world is cleaved by End-Of-Times fanaticism and Occupy global optimism, rock concert massacres and 2000-mile walls between countries, economic imperialism and regime-change refugees. We are polarised to a degree that is unprecedented: look no further for evidence than the preposterous ascension of Donald Trump’s clownocracy. Terrorism has changed the Free World irreparably, so much so that the epithet is hardly applicable any more. People are on the move and traditional borders, even the idea of borders, are disintegrating. Do we have a moral obligation to help people whose lives have been shattered or a civic duty to keep them out, you know, just in case? Jacques Audiard’s newest film, Dheepan (winner of the Palm D’Or...
- 3/22/2016
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Deadpool, by Dr. Garth Twa. Deadpool is directed by Tim Miller and stars Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Gina Carano, T.J. Miller and Ed Skrein. I don’t think there’s supposed to be penises in Marvel movies. I mean, I don’t know for sure. I’m not exactly, like, a Marvel movie expert. So let’s just get that out of the way. Analyzing the minutiae of the Marvel Universe logic, logistics, and idiosyncratic laws of relativity and thermodynamics would be like me parsing the differences in pre- and post-reformation catechism of Eastern Orthodox liturgy. I'm not exactly an expert. I don't even know for sure there is a pre-reformation liturgy, and if it differs from post-reformation. But I'm pretty sure Marvel movies don't usually have penises. I mean, it may be a conflagrated penis, but it’s distinctly a penis, dangling,...
- 2/18/2016
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of She's Funny That Way, directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Imogen Poots, Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, Rhys Ifans and Will Forte. Reviewed by Dr. Garth Twa. Let’s not dwell on the bad stuff. It’s a good thing to share a planet with Peter Bogdanovich. He’s made it slightly better. He was an integral part of that bubble of filmmaking— late ‘60s, early ‘70s—when American films became an art form, comparable to great American novels, comparable to the redefinition of drama by the post-war playwrights. (Sort of like what cable television is doing now.) In the late 1960s the old, classic studios were moribund: anti-trust violations had decimated the monopolistic structure of Hollywood and television had hacked the audience in half almost overnight. Also, the studios were pretty much finished after the disintegration of the Star System, where studios outright...
- 9/24/2015
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Slow West, directed by John Maclean and starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Caren Pistorius and Rory McCann. Written by Dr. Garth Twa. Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a tenderfoot from Scotland, hapless as an albino heifer, in the sprawling American mythic west, once upon a time, in search of his sweet-cheeked gal, Rose, who’s running from the law. Nearly mowed down by a renegade injun, he’s soon looking down the expulsive end of a confederate shooting-iron. But a shot rings out, and it’s not his. A battered outlaw in a bandana named Silas (Michael Fassbender) has saved his britches.
- 7/26/2015
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Birdman, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, Naomi Watts and Andrea Riseborough. Written by Dr. Garth Twa for @puremovies. Michael Keaton is an American actor in his sixties who had, earlier on in his career, an admirable run of intelligent, worthy roles on stage and in films, but then became a movie star, playing a comic book superhero called Batman. He never seemed to quite go anywhere from there (because you can’t, really), losing his hair a bit, getting jowls. After Batman, his work is often referred to as ‘other notable work.’...
- 1/2/2015
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Dr. Garth Twa explores Romania's premiere attraction
A wind was picking up in the Transylvanian night, blown down cold from the Carpathians, bringing with it ominous rolling clouds that obscured any moon there might have been. I was in the back of a cab with Ovidus Buhuţan, the assistant programmer at the Transylvania Film Festival. We drove, over a bridge crossing the Someșul Mic river, leaving behind the central square of the ancient township—enshadowed by the 15th Century gothic St. Michael’s church and the statue of medieval ruler Matthias Corvinus, who kept Transylvania free from the invading masses; the somber dank colonnades of the baroque Banffy Palace and art museum, the fast food outlets selling mamaliga and mici—and into former communist domesticity and industry.
A wind was picking up in the Transylvanian night, blown down cold from the Carpathians, bringing with it ominous rolling clouds that obscured any moon there might have been. I was in the back of a cab with Ovidus Buhuţan, the assistant programmer at the Transylvania Film Festival. We drove, over a bridge crossing the Someșul Mic river, leaving behind the central square of the ancient township—enshadowed by the 15th Century gothic St. Michael’s church and the statue of medieval ruler Matthias Corvinus, who kept Transylvania free from the invading masses; the somber dank colonnades of the baroque Banffy Palace and art museum, the fast food outlets selling mamaliga and mici—and into former communist domesticity and industry.
- 10/2/2014
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Godzilla, directed by Gareth Edwards, and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Sally Hawkins, Juliette Binoche and David Strathairn. Reviewed by Dr. Garth Twa exclusively for @puremovies. Godzilla. Again. He (or sometimes she)(or sometimes, conveniently, both) has had a career that’s only been surpassed by Mickey Rooney. God rest his soul. We’ve known the story for 60 years, decades that have seen him battle Mothra, Megalon, smog monsters, Bambi, and Matthew Broderick. We’ve also seen the same story told with Days After Tomorrow, Wall-Es, and Attacking Crab Monsters. The story is this: Man, in his naiveté and hubris, f***s things up and all Neolithic hell breaks loose. It’s, of course—and most urgently during at the time of its initial Japanese incarnation—a metaphor for our fatalistic anxieties, which have ebbed and flowed through the decades and the films,...
- 5/20/2014
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Dr. Garth Twa talks to Basil Da Cunha about After the Night.
Basil Da Cunha’s first feature, After The Night, is a unique hybrid in the bestiary of film. Set in the creole ghettos of Lisbon, it has the documentary grunge of social realism, like La Terra Trema (1948), Luchino Visconti’s glamorously grimy Italian neo-realist classic; or Life of Jesus (1997), Bruno Dumont’s unflinching excursion in youthful destruction; or last year’s The Selfish Giant (2013) by Clio Barnard with its traditional British surfeit of absence of hope. It’s like these films, only without the glitz. But After the Night is also a genre film, a favela noir, with a hapless, hopeless doomed anti-hero, Sombra, always on the hurt end of a beating, with bad debts and bad loans, his sass with woman turning into meek groveling, always in the wrong place.
Basil Da Cunha’s first feature, After The Night, is a unique hybrid in the bestiary of film. Set in the creole ghettos of Lisbon, it has the documentary grunge of social realism, like La Terra Trema (1948), Luchino Visconti’s glamorously grimy Italian neo-realist classic; or Life of Jesus (1997), Bruno Dumont’s unflinching excursion in youthful destruction; or last year’s The Selfish Giant (2013) by Clio Barnard with its traditional British surfeit of absence of hope. It’s like these films, only without the glitz. But After the Night is also a genre film, a favela noir, with a hapless, hopeless doomed anti-hero, Sombra, always on the hurt end of a beating, with bad debts and bad loans, his sass with woman turning into meek groveling, always in the wrong place.
- 4/25/2014
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of The Invisible Woman, directed by Ralph Fiennes and starring Ralph Fiennes, Felicity Jones, Joanna Scanlan, Kristin Scott Thomas and Tom Hollander. Written by Dr. Garth Twa exclusively for @puremovies. Ralph Fiennes has long ago proven to be the foremost actor working today. And, with two features behind him—the bracing Coriolanus and now The Invisible Woman—he’s proven to be one of the most original and invigorating directors. What he brings to his performance he now brings to all the performances: a quiet turbulent emotion—in Coriolanus, the visceral and potent fevers of politics, war, and the media were electrifying; in The Invisible Woman, he presents us with sumptuous tableaux vivant that gasp their way into passionate life. The invisible woman is a mistress. But with an artist, any woman is destined to be the mistress, because first—always—in his heart,...
- 2/10/2014
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Blue Jasmine, directed by Woody Allen and starring Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard, Sally Hawkins. Written by Garth Twa. In L.A., on a layover, I went to a morning screening of Midnight In Paris in Westwood. It was the new Woody Allen film. I felt like a dog who has developed learned helplessness, having dutifully made pilgrimages each year to each new Woody Allen, and year after year of tense hope, of thinking, ‘Just one more! One more good one!’ emerging from the cinema slightly devastated. This new one worried me a bit. The title, mainly. But I still hadn’t given up. As I did annually, I caught my breath when the familiar, exquisite white Windsor font on black background came up on the title cards accompanied by an old jazz recording. It was still before noon when the film ended.
- 2/6/2014
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Dr. Garth Twa gives his picks for the Golden Globes 2014.
The Golden Globes are a strange critter; put on by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, they are not technically an industry event, more like an industry-lichen event, which have been taken with fulsome vigor to the Hollywood teat. They are an odd insoluble mixture, like unstirred salad dressing, of naked tourist fandom and enculturated art house sensibilities. The HFPA are not Hollywood insiders. They are a group of foreign correspondents covering films.
Unlike other foreign correspondents—who are there in a story, creating stories, possibly changing the world, and often the most important person in the situation—these are microbes clinging on the impermeable bubble of Tinseltown, and are never the most famous person in a room (let’s be honest, writing about movies isn’t exactly investigative journalism).
The Golden Globes are a strange critter; put on by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, they are not technically an industry event, more like an industry-lichen event, which have been taken with fulsome vigor to the Hollywood teat. They are an odd insoluble mixture, like unstirred salad dressing, of naked tourist fandom and enculturated art house sensibilities. The HFPA are not Hollywood insiders. They are a group of foreign correspondents covering films.
Unlike other foreign correspondents—who are there in a story, creating stories, possibly changing the world, and often the most important person in the situation—these are microbes clinging on the impermeable bubble of Tinseltown, and are never the most famous person in a room (let’s be honest, writing about movies isn’t exactly investigative journalism).
- 1/8/2014
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
The Upstream Color director talks exclusively to Dr. Garth Twa about making the film, directing himself and his future work.
Upstream Color director Shane Carruth talks exclusively to Dr. Garth Twa about making the film, directing himself and his future work.
Your films tend to explore interiority, and be ardently non-Hollywood studio…
Shane Carruth: I think narrative is necessarily veiled no matter what you’re doing. It’s just how veiled—if it’s a Garfield cartoon it’s not very veiled, but it is somewhat because there’s something you don’t know, there’s 90 minutes that are about to elapse and you don’t know necessarily where it’s going to end, or at least how it’s going to get there, so there’s a minute-by-minute process happening where the audience’s brain or our brains are wondering what’s next? What’s going to be...
Upstream Color director Shane Carruth talks exclusively to Dr. Garth Twa about making the film, directing himself and his future work.
Your films tend to explore interiority, and be ardently non-Hollywood studio…
Shane Carruth: I think narrative is necessarily veiled no matter what you’re doing. It’s just how veiled—if it’s a Garfield cartoon it’s not very veiled, but it is somewhat because there’s something you don’t know, there’s 90 minutes that are about to elapse and you don’t know necessarily where it’s going to end, or at least how it’s going to get there, so there’s a minute-by-minute process happening where the audience’s brain or our brains are wondering what’s next? What’s going to be...
- 11/11/2013
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Quentin Tarantino has been named the most-studied director in the UK.
A survey of 17 academics by the recently-relaunched PureMovies.co.uk film website found that the controversial director had been referenced more than any other in the essays and dissertations marked over the last five years.
Christopher Nolan was in second place, with his Dark Knight Trilogy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises) being the most-cited films.
Head of Film Studies at Uxbridge College Dr Garth Twa said: "It's no surprise. Tarantino is visceral, accessible, and students new to film studies have an immediate handle on visual pleasure.
"What is great about Tarantino is that he can serve as a gateway to appreciate everything from the French New Wave to genre studies to gender representation in film."
He added: "Batman is a perennial franchise that will always find a market.
"He's a hero who's relatable, but also flawed like we are,...
A survey of 17 academics by the recently-relaunched PureMovies.co.uk film website found that the controversial director had been referenced more than any other in the essays and dissertations marked over the last five years.
Christopher Nolan was in second place, with his Dark Knight Trilogy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises) being the most-cited films.
Head of Film Studies at Uxbridge College Dr Garth Twa said: "It's no surprise. Tarantino is visceral, accessible, and students new to film studies have an immediate handle on visual pleasure.
"What is great about Tarantino is that he can serve as a gateway to appreciate everything from the French New Wave to genre studies to gender representation in film."
He added: "Batman is a perennial franchise that will always find a market.
"He's a hero who's relatable, but also flawed like we are,...
- 11/6/2013
- Digital Spy
Garth Twa, the award-winning director, producer and writer, looks back on the first Sundance London and films such as Luv, Filly Brown, For Ellen, Nobody Walks, An Oversimplification of her Beauty, Liberal Arts, Safety Not Guaranteed, Finding North, Harmony and Queen of Versailles! In 1981, on his ranch on a mountainside in Utah, Robert Redford created an earnest little enclave whose modesty, in the beginning, belied the upheaval that it would produce in American film. Starting as a cabal of creative intimates—just a group of pals getting together far from the existentialist scream of pain of Hollywood[1]—they sought to ‘create an environment designed to foster independence, discovery, and new voices in American film.
- 6/17/2012
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Michel Hazanavicius and starring John Goodman, Malcolm McDowell, Missi Pyle, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo and Bitsie Tulloch. Reviewed by Garth Twa for @puremovies. Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist is an affectionate and lustrous wet kiss to Hollywood. It is an homage, it is a paean, it is a celebration: a black and white silent film about black and white silent films, a behind-the-screen romantic comedy that fully embodies the glory and goofiness of a neonate film industry. Well, it’s mostly silent; Hazanavicius is exuberantly playful with the whole medium of motion pictures, and some of the cleverest and funniest moments are when he toys with the notion of silence in movies. His attention to detail is as keen as any ardent suitor’s: when George is replaying his old films in the new era, they are slightly too fast,...
- 6/4/2012
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of The Monk, directed by Dominik Moll and starring Vincent Cassel, Déborah François, Joséphine Japy and Sergi López. Written by award-winning producer and director Garth Twa, exclusively for Pure Movies. Lightning rents the black sky. A castle, er, monastery sits high and forbidding on a distant hill. Eddies swirl in angry, bloated streams; foundlings are dangled. Crows screech from turrets; gargoyles loom with hollow mouths. The Monk, the new film by Dominik Moll (Lemming; Harry, He’s Here To Help) has all the tropes of a sturdy diabolic horror film: thrashings of Hammer gothic, buckets of Roger Corman Grand Guignol, and also—as a bonus, because it’s French—nods to Bosch, Breugel, Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc and Jodorowsky’s daylight surrealism.
- 4/29/2012
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Dr. Garth Twa takes an in-depth look at La Grande Illusion - a revolutionary milestone of visual art, exclusively for @puremovies We all have those films, those films that open us up. La Grand Illusion is one of those films. It was for Orson Welles, and for Woody Allen. That’s what so important about what Studiocanal is doing. ‘With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other, and to ourselves,’ Martin Scorsese says, 'movies touch our hearts, and awaken our vision, and change the way we see things. They take us to other places. They open doors and minds. Movies are the memories of our lifetime. We need to keep them alive.' In addition to restoring and re-releasing La Grand Illusion, this year Studiocanal are also bringing out Marcel Carné’s Quai des Brumes, Luis Bunuel...
- 4/7/2012
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of This Must Be The Place starring Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, Harry Dean Stanton, Eve Houston, Judd Hirsch, directed by Paolo Sorrentino. Reviewed by Dr. Garth Twa. This Must Be the Place is a love letter from an affectionate misanthrope, delighting in the ebullient self-delusion of America, the innocent overblown self-satisfaction, the unexamined eccentricity. Cheyenne's trek through the heartland is not a dangerous one but instead a brilliant gallery of oddities and neutered archetypes, a shiny fairy tale of trailer park America (in actuality it's a very dicey place for any freak—just look at the recent Republican debates).
- 3/28/2012
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, John Goodman and Max Von Sydow. Written by Garth Twa. On an inconceivable day in September, in 2001, two planes rent a hole in the New York skyline and the psyche of America. It sent the world into shock; we needed a whole new category of emotion, of comprehension, one that we're still trying to figure out a decade later. The irrational fears of a child suddenly were the only ones that make sense, in a world where irrationality has taken over. The personal tragedy of losing someone in the collapse was hard to process in the normal regimen of grief as the event took on international and historic proportions. The ability to mourn the loss of a father was stymied in the weight of mourning a country's—a world's—innocence.
- 2/18/2012
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly. Written for @puremovies by Garth Twa. In the opening single-take—the only exterior shot in the film—children are playing in the distance. We can't see their faces, but, like animals in a zoo, we recognise their species: we see their group movements, their clan allegiances solidifying, their stances becoming more territorial. One boy, 'armed' with a stick (a matter of lexical contention later) hits another one, echoing the opening of 2001, A Space Odyssey—the blow has been struck, the true base nature of mankind has emerged, and there's no turning back. On the soundtrack Alexander Desplat's brilliant score moves from the plucky strings of a New York society film into increasingly insistent kettle drums. Two tribes go to war.
- 2/4/2012
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Gandu (English title: Asshole) for the London Film Festival, reviewed by Garth Twa for Pure Movies. Asshole is directed by Kaushik Mukherjee and stars Anubrata, Joyraj and Rii. Is it, maybe, the watershed of India punk, an explosion of nihilism that will change a generation, like Jarman’s The Last of England or Spheeris’s The Decline of Western Civilization? It doesn’t really confront or challenge stylistic clichés like those exuberant in-your-face films, but instead adopts them, as though this is an audition piece in order to get signed by a label. And although these kids have justification for being pissed off, this feels less authentically anarchic that it does just plain opportunistic. A review isn’t really necessary for Asshole, a new film (as I believe it’s be labelled) by Kaushik Mukherjee. A description will probably do the job.
- 10/30/2011
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is an exclusive interview with Lynne Ramsey and Ezra Miller for We Need to Talk About Kevin which is screening at London Film Festival. The film also stars Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Siobhan Fallon, Ursula Parker and Ashley Gerasimovich. Interview by screenwriter and director Dr. Garth Twa. Lynne Ramsey’s new film, We Need To Talk About Kevin, based on the novel by Lionel Shriver, is a stunning movie, near flawless despite it’s tiny budget (‘We were trying to make a film in America with UK money’ says Ramsey). The story of mother who sees her that something is going very wrong with her son, but is unequipped to do anything about it, is pitch perfect, from the performances of Tilda Swinton as Eva (a perfect role for her singular talent), Ezra Miller as the older Kevin (chilling and perhaps the most nuanced psychopath in film history) and,...
- 10/20/2011
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Shame, directed by Steve McQueen, written by Abi Morgan and starring Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Hannah Ware and Nicole Beharie. Reviewed as part of the 55th London Film Festival by Garth Twa for @puremovies. Steve McQueen’s second feature is a merciless exploration of the frigid soul of a sex addict named Brandon, a successful—professionally and personally—New York City predator. He’s almost as obsessive as he is compulsive, his uptown apartment as sterile and uncluttered as his heart. Brandon’s life shares a zip code with Patrick Bateman’s (American Psycho), although his condition is by a margin saner—if, that is, you make the moral distinction that sex addiction without actually murdering people is saner, although, I believe, there’s of the same cluster in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV (but I could be wrong,...
- 10/19/2011
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of 360, directed by Fernando Meirelles and starring Rachel Weisz, Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Ben Foster, Moritz Bleibtreu, Mark Ivanir, Jamel Debbouze and Peter Morgan. Reviewed at the London Film Festival by Garth Twa for Pure Movies. Even if, perhaps, all the various threads don’t weave together into a perfect tapestry, 360 is, nonetheless, an object lesson in excellence of film craft. The stuff of cinema—the imagery, the mise en scene, the editing—is virtuosic. Full of sublime grace notes and performances of ingenuous complexity, it is a film of loss, resignation, forgiveness, compromise, and ultimately just simple human connection and our responsibility to, as much as possible, take care of each other when we can. 360 is a film made by a humanist with a nearly unparalleled and courageous talent.
- 10/16/2011
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of A Prophet, directed by Jacques Audiard and starring Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif, Hichem Yacoubi, Reda Kateb and Jean-Philippe Ricci. Reviewed by award-winning screenwriter Garth Twa. There’s something like a birth at the beginning of Jacques Audiard’s new film, A Prophet. We glimpse a confusing world of disembodied sounds and blurry, obscured images, like we’ve just arrived, like we’re seeing things through a sack on a hostage’s head, or, indeed, a fallopian tube. Malik (Tahar Rahim) appears in this prison which is the whole world, like a newborn, with no discernable past. He is has no friends, no family, no religion that he seems conscious of, Euro-less, illiterate. He’s been sentenced to six years, though we never find out what for. Everything he is, which isn’t much, and everything he’ll become, which is formidable,...
- 10/2/2010
- by Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the review of The Blind Side by award-winning writer, director and producer Garth Twa, in which he gives the film 1 star. The Blind Side is directed by John Lee Hancock and starring Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Jae Head, Lily Collins, Ray McKinnon, Kim Dickens, Adriane Lenox and Kathy Bates. I was in awe of this movie; stunned. Stunned that it had made it to the big screen, let alone the Oscars. It’s glossy fodder for the Trinity Broadcasting Channel, a right-wing Christian wet dream: neo-colonial buildings, no litter, no negroes, no gays, a big house, squeaky pink children with no trace of libidos, a fortune gained without guilt by blighting the minority masses with growth hormone-laced fast food, self-righteous Bush-era arrogance, and card-carrying NRA motherhood (guns don’t kill people, Avon Lady Christian moms just clean up ghettos – or, as Dirty Harry, said, ‘Nothing wrong...
- 8/14/2010
- by Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
The Pure Movies review of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams and Emily Mortimer, by Garth Twa. Everyone seems to get outraged whenever Scorsese decides to make something outside the genre he redefined and crystallized, as though not making another gangster epic is a personal affront. Other directors get to experiment and have fun, get to try different things. True, Edith Wharton was perhaps a stretch too far, but what about his comedies? My two favourite Scorsese films are from his forgotten years, King Of Comedy and After Hours. Perhaps they’re not comedies in the Judd Apatow vein, but nonetheless they are brilliantly dark and funny in a more or less horrible way. But they’re overlooked, kind of hushed up and not spoken of, like a couple of illegitimate kids in the royal family.
- 8/1/2010
- by Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of Lourdes. Directed by Jessica Hausner, starring Sylvie Testud, Léa Seydoux, Gilette Barbier, Gerhard Liebmann, Bruno Todeschini, Elina Löwensohn and Katharina Flicker. Reviewed exclusively by Garth Twa. It’s a movie that utilizes and plays with the possibilities and conventions of cinema, that challenges your preconceived notions, that actually changes you, changes your brain, like a great piece of literature. You look differently at the world. This isn’t spectacular—there are no explosions or chases through the glowing trees of Pandora—but rather it is small and disconcertingly intimate, which is the size something needs to be to get properly under your skin. It’s the kind of movie that makes me love cinema.
- 7/11/2010
- by Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review, written exclusively by Garth Twa, for Life During Wartime, directed by Todd Solondz and starring Shirley Henderson, Michael K. Williams, Roslyn Ruff, Allison Janney, Michael Lerner, Dylan Riley Snyder, Ciarán Hinds and Renée Taylor. In Todd Solondz’s new film, Life During Wartime, he revisits his 1998 film Happiness. Happiness is a breathtaking and singular film with a humour so dark and ghastly it leaves one gasping, not laughing. It gave us a suburbia that belonged in a side panel of a Bosch triptych, surreal and troubling, heightened by its garish mundanity. Seared into our collective cinephilic consciousnesses are scenes like Kristina (Camryn Manheim) scarfing a cheeseburger and fries while explaining to her date, Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman) how she chopped up the doorman and put him Ziploc bags and stored him the freezer; a psychotherapist (Dylan Baker) pragmatically discussing erections and masturbation with his...
- 7/11/2010
- by Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is an exclusive interview with Sylvie Testud following her performance in Lourdes, by Garth Twa. The film is directed by Jessica Hausner, and also stars Léa Seydoux, Gilette Barbier, Gerhard Liebmann, Bruno Todeschini, Elina Löwensohn and Katharina Flicker. The interview was with acclaimed director and screenwriter Garth Twa. In Lourdes, the new film by director Jessica Hausner, Sylvie Testud stars as Christine, a woman crippled by multiple sclerosis. It is a complex, subtle, slightly wicked film that explores religion, the business of religion, human nature, and faith.
- 7/10/2010
- by Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
This is the Pure Movies review of A Single Man, directed by Tom Ford and starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult, Matthew Goode, Jon Kortajarena and Paulette Lamori, reviewed exclusively for Pure Movies by acclaimed director Garth Twa. George (Colin Firth) is a prim man, a university professor, in California in 1962, so hobbled by grief that there is nothing else. Life, all that is ordinary, is rife with pain. Everything he sees, everything he touches, no matter how mundane, is shackled to memories of his dead lover, Jim (Mathew Goode); memories that come at George, in flashbacks, with force and pain of a shiv. It is better to have loved and lost, Tennyson wrote, than to have never loved at all. This is not true. Loss can be so profound that it peels you hollow from the inside. Life for George has become far from meaningless; meaningless would be good,...
- 6/6/2010
- by Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Note: This article contains language that some may find offensive. This is the review of 44 Inch Chest, reviewed by acclaimed director Garth Twa. The film is directed by Malcolm Venville and stars Dave Legeno, Ian McShane, Joanne Whalley, John Hurt, Ray Winstone and Tom Wilkinson. In this world of dirty crime and pathological masculinity—where people have names like Old Man Peanut, Biggy Walpole, and Bumface, and instead of opening windows smash through them with their fists—the worst offence imaginable is cuckoldry...
- 5/8/2010
- by Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Tahar Rahim, one of the most anticipated stars of 2010, talks exclusively to Garth Twa about why he was happy to go to jail.
A Prophet is a visceral, explosive new film from Jacques Audiard (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) featuring a tour-de-force performance by relative newcomer Tahar Rahim. Rahim plays Malik El Djebena an innocent (in all respects except, well, legally) thrown into the pressure cooker of a prison who quickly learns what it takes to survive, and thrive. The film won Best Picture at this year’s London Film Festival, the Grand Prix at Cannes, Best Actor at the European Film Awards, and is nominated as Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Golden Globes.
I met with Tahar, who was gregarious and vibrant and could barely remain seated on the couch, and his interpreter (though his English was excellent) to discuss the difficulties and joys in...
A Prophet is a visceral, explosive new film from Jacques Audiard (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) featuring a tour-de-force performance by relative newcomer Tahar Rahim. Rahim plays Malik El Djebena an innocent (in all respects except, well, legally) thrown into the pressure cooker of a prison who quickly learns what it takes to survive, and thrive. The film won Best Picture at this year’s London Film Festival, the Grand Prix at Cannes, Best Actor at the European Film Awards, and is nominated as Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Golden Globes.
I met with Tahar, who was gregarious and vibrant and could barely remain seated on the couch, and his interpreter (though his English was excellent) to discuss the difficulties and joys in...
- 1/6/2010
- by Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
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