Deconstructing the spectacle, measuring empty calories, offering nutritional insights on films newly released, as well as archival treasures, assessing the state of film culture, exploring new formats & illuminating cinema’s place in society, as well as in our individual psychology.
READ MOREMy 2009 PhD proposal, aimed at studying how we are enchanted by film, juxtaposing early film theory, post-Jungian analysis, anthropology of ritual, and the moving image as transformative tool in art therapy, coining the term archetypal enchantment. It serves as basis to my subsequent theoretical approach to cinema.
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Writer, artist, filmologist. Poetic art and alchemical storytelling. Independent scholar, researching psychology of cinema and spectatorship, the female gaze, psychology of art and creativity, archetypal enchantment. BA Psychology/MA History of Film & Visual Media. Tomatometer-Approved Critic. Author at Poets, Mavericks & Prophets and Lola On Film, hosts Lola & The Poets Podcast on magical realities, runs an art Story Shop. Serbia-UK. To get in touch, please e-mail me at milana@lolaonfilm.com
Its emphasis on impeccable style and photogenic chit-chat was certainly counter-productive to my previous sympathies, as I began to wonder if this Navalny was the same person who courageously, almost single-handedly, took on the Russian security state. A missed opportunity for creating compelling testimony about an authentically dire situation. ★✩✩✩✩
READ MOREA profound and discombobulating meditation on the twin entities constituting the cult of fame — the star and its mirror image, the public, examining the corrosive power dynamic underlying the exchange of one’s identity for mass attention, as well as the hot topic of separating art from the artist. An ancient schism currently manifesting as cancel culture. ★★★★★
READ MOREAll the weight of the story (metaphorically and literally) is carried by its tragic protagonist — the ailing Charlie, whom Brendan Fraser portrays with such depth, nuance, and wit. Nothing in the film’s text matches this commitment, and that’s a problem. The needlessly prolonged gaze upon Charlie’s physicality further killing the point aimed to be conveyed. ★★★✩✩
READ MORELike being on a theme park ride you thought would be fantastic fun, then nausea and disorientation kick in, colours blur. EEAAO holds within it a great idea, when one disentangles it from the hairball that is its narrative. In all its originality, it telegraphs its message, instead of allowing this intricately constructed ingenious world to be the message. ★★✩✩✩
READ MORECaptures the fragile state of being a human in one grand swoop of wit and weltschmerz — the film’s contours elegantly morose, its humour dark and bitter-sweet, its inhabitants erratic and gloriously eloquent, its landscape a mystery onto itself. The eponymous banshee, right on the money, carrying the mythical into the realms of the mundane. ★★★★★
READ MOREThe point where all good intentions in a storyline turn to dust is when the narrative stops respecting its characters, however vile they are. In Östlund’s Palme d’Or-winner, satire turns to caricature pretty quickly, offering an array of humans so painfully vapid, that I started to root for these horrible people to be given at least an ounce of screen dignity. ★★✩✩✩
READ MOREPoitras and Goldin were made for each other. Both incredibly gutsy, and and uninterested in no-go zones, prone to slaying dragons of substantial calibre. But, despite Poitras being a powerful storyteller in her own right, this doc lives and breaths Goldin’s indefatigable spirit. The space Goldin gave to her own subjects, Poitras gives to Goldin. ★★★★✩
READ MOREAn intelligent, impeccable essay film which reaches far beyond discussing fascinating aspects connecting the work of David Lynch to Victor Fleming‘s timeless wonder, Wizard Of Oz. Director Alexandre O. Philippe is turning out to be a virtuoso in translating cinematic sorcery into cultural code, firmly positioned on the crossroads of zeitgeist and cinema. ★★★★★
READ MOREDespite a labyrinth of narrative strands, it is Melling’s Poe that is at the heart of a story, which, at its dark centre, is equally about savage desperation as it is about blind desire. If it kept its early promise of a macabre deep dive into Poe’s literary universe, via an intricate murder mystery, this would have been an outstanding thriller. Still, a riveting watch. ★★★✩✩
READ MOREAn uneven, slightly unhinged piece of classic storytelling, featuring a gloriously deadpan Tilda Swinton as a solitary Scottish narratologist, and an amused Idris Elba as a genie. While it is visually luscious and bursting with (narrative) calories, it does not seem to make up its mind which genre and indeed audience age-group it actually belongs to. ★★★✩✩
READ MOREDespite Daniel Craig’s fabulous Southern Belle, pastel-coloured play at James Bond, this oddly fragmented whodunit is more pastiche than a sequel — a collage of clever, lovingly shaped skits struggling to join the narrative stream of a single story, albeit with some of the best cameos in the business. Rides the coattails of its stellar predecessor. ★★★✩✩
READ MORERiveting, ravishing, richly sourced and far too long, Brett Morgen’s archival Bowie bonanza is essentially a stream of consciousness story on an era-defining genius’s lasting influence. All vintage footage and fragmented fantasy, it celebrates Bowie’s postmodernist world-view, but in that deference loses sight of the intricacies of its own medium. ★★★✩✩
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The only way to look at Chernobyl is through the complex ocular shield of the camera, otherwise we’d be staring at Medusa’s face, unprotected. An open nuclear reactor core burning…
History hiding underneath its own frayed repeats. It’s 1933 Britain. Fascism as collective narcissism. Narcissism as ultimate isolation from life source. John Malkovich as Poirot, a stranger in a strange land,…
Something in the nature of a recording defies rational explanation. A replica of life, its twin and its double, also its deathly echo, preserving life by embalming it for eternity, or at least until the shelf life of the medium itself expires. Images have the numinosity to affect us deeply – a capacity to heal…
Exploring the myth of the fallen woman in classic Hollywood melodrama, its historical, religious and literary antecedents, archetypal realms of the dark, wild feminine projected onto the screen, her impact on the spectator. A dispossessed femininity, fragmented and demonised, yet powerfully vibrant and creative.
There is no one closer to the true enchantment of film than the film projectionist – a craft that is slowly disappearing, as celluloid itself, and should be cherished as cinema treasure. Film, in its essence, is its medium. And the projectionist, therefore, its magician in residence. So consider this an interview with a master.
AUTHOR ©MILANA VUJKOV
Lola On Film 