Downsizing (Alexander Payne)

Small scale

Alexander Payne's new film Downsizing is a slyer comic take on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels than the Jack Black travesty some seven years back--is perhaps the best adaptation of this classic fantasy satire to date.

A Ghost Story (David Lowery)

Comin around again

Not a fan of David Lowery's Pete's Dragon--in retrospect the picture probably had too much Disney in it and not enough Lowery to suit me. 

Heard good things about his latest though, so--thanks to the various recommendations, the pull of the intriguingly elemental title, the sparsely beautiful publicity stills (mostly involving a single slightly creepy figure in white sheet gazing at an empty room)--I decided to take a look.

The Death of Louis XIV

Long live the

Albert Serra's The Death of Louis XIV at first glance shares the status of most living royalties in this more presidential more prime-ministerial world: it feels oddly anachronistic; it appears to hold little relevance to our lives; and very little is said or actually happens in its relatively brief and quiet reign, beyond the eponymous event. It's also to my mind one of the most gorgeous-looking--and funniest--films I've seen all year.

Dr. Who Christmas Special: Twice Upon a Time

Double jeopardy

(WARNING: plot twists throughout new Who's timeline discussed in close detail!)

It's the thirteenth Doctor Who Christmas Special; it's the Twelfth Doctor meeting the First (or as he prefers to put it the 'original') Doctor; it's Peter Capaldi's final bow; it's Steve Moffat's last word on the subject.

The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson)

The lame Jedi

(WARNING: plot twists and overall narrative discussed in explicit detail)

You thought The Force Awakens was clumsily stitched together from the cold leftovers of the first Star Wars movie?* Get a load of this carcass--

Mudbound (Dees Rees, 2017)

Dirt poor

Dees Rees' Mudbound (2017) adapted from the novel by Hillary Jordan tells the story of two families--one white the other black--scratching out a living on the Mississippi Delta. Two soldiers come home, one a white officer (captain of a bomber crew) the other black (a tank commander).

Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962) revisited

La ronde

(WARNING: Plot and narrative twists discussed in close detail) 

Credit where credit is due: was invited to listen to a podcast on Kubrick's film Lolita (which I'd written about some weeks ago) and while I disagreed with most of the conclusions reached the discussion did set me to thinking more on the film--leading to this, an attempt at elaboration and clarification.

Mention the film's title or the Vladimir Nabokov novel it was adapted from and people immediately think of middle-aged men chasing prepubescent girls; the name was enshrined in hardbound form in The Lolita Complex--a collection of cases about young girls seducing older men presented as a serious psychological study (actually fake, the author Russell Trainer--who could've stepped straight out of a Nabokov novel--being something of a con artist). When the book was translated into Japanese the title--shortened to 'lolicon'--was adopted to refer to a whole genre of anime and manga depicting attraction to young girls, not to mention the strange sad men who obsess over them.

I've found one serious piece on Nabokov's novel. Not a peer-reviewed research paper but an article by a psychology professor (Psychology Today, for the record)--and it discusses Humbert's narcissism not his pedophilia (or hebephilia, depending on the age of the youth involved). 

Unless someone can produce such a study (not saying it doesn't exist but there's nothing readily available through Google) I suspect Nabokov's Humbert Humbert is meant to be more of a literary construct (think Russell Trainer, only brilliant) than a serious psychological or psychiatric subject, the pedophilia (or hebephilia) in Lolita more a MacGuffin diverting attention away from the author's true purpose: to "fix once for all the perilous magic of" obsession.