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Lola says…
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.
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Film, the Alchemical Medium
On 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.
READ MOREMETAPHYSICS OF CINEMA FILMOLOGY FILM AS MEDIUM THEORY CINEMA AND SOCIETY CULTURE CELLULOID TREASURES ARCHIVES INDIE PICS LOLA LOVES SHORTS
Writer, artist, independent scholar, fusing poetic art and alchemical storytelling in her artistic expression. Independent film scholar, researching psychology of cinema and spectatorship, the female gaze, psychology of art and creativity, archetypal enchantment, consciousness and culture. 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 online Story Shop. Serbia-UK. To get in touch, please e-mail me at milana@lolaonfilm.com
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Latest Reviews
The Woman In Cabin 10
A film thematically sawed in half, as if penned by two entirely different minds, styles, and social politics, glued in the middle by Knightley’s determined performance, which, through sheer grit and star power, carries the Promethean fire of a promising Hitchcockian thriller (with mistaken identities & much to say on the filthy rich), to a convoluted soap opera conclusion.
★★☆☆☆
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The Unpublished Word (Manuscripts Don’t Burn) — On Censorship, Film Writing & Trauma
Reflecting on the emotional paralysis I underwent publishing a film review, I examine the impact of personal, familial, and collective trauma on individual expression, the implications of self-censorship on writing, addressing deeper dilemmas of engagement in polarised public discourse in post-conflict societies. Published in Patterns of Miscommunication in Contemporary East-Central European Cinema (2024).
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Soundtrack To A Coup d’Etat
Grimonprez’s maverick doc is a complex wild ride tracking the 1961 CIA-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first PM of the Democratic Republic of Congo, an inspired piecing-together of a painful historical trajectory through cleverly devised bebop shortcuts, using editing and source material as jazz improv, stunning its viewer with its bulls-eye accuracy.
★★★★★
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Nosferatu
Macabre and glamorous, perfectly shot, yet lacking in the original’s black humour, resorting to self-irony, instead, this fascinating story of death and desire slowly succumbs to becoming the very disease it depicts, mesmerised by its own beautiful, soulless emptiness, fully open to the seductive corruption it so masterfully and pedantically conveys.
★★★☆☆
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A Complete Unknown
Electrifying (pun intended), despite a few glitches in its finely threaded matrix, mostly in places where it tries too hard to be Dylanesque. Timothée Chalamet inhabits the legendary musician with elegance and ease, allowing for his own interpretation to be led by an intuitive understanding of the man, rather than mimicry or idolatry.
★★★★☆
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A Sacrifice
An adaptation of a Nicholas Hogg novel, darkly atmospheric, it kicks off verging on decent and thought-provoking, but quickly slips into a rushed set of simplified conclusions which undermine the backbone of a solid story tackling important themes — the danger of groupthink, eco-doomsday cults, and the siren spell of internet gurus.
★★☆☆☆
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Juror #2
An honest piece of filmmaking, in which Eastwood turns a beady eye on the inner workings of the US judicial system. It is a pity that in steadily manning this ship, the director stops short each time the actors arrive at a point of inner truth, pulling them back into the broader picture, pushing for the examination of an entire society.
★★★☆☆
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Joker: Folie à Deux
A failed musical courtroom melodrama, whose bloated agenda betrayed Joaquin Phoenix’s singular creation, a living entity of its own haunting the popular mythos — while fragments of this difficult, compelling tale lie strewn on the floor, as if in a bloody Gotham City crime scene, waiting for a forensic examination of its disemboweled narrative.
★☆☆☆☆
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Conclave
Playing out like a breathless thriller, its dry humour colouring its elegant script, with zany indie logic applied to an epic tale, and the contemporary spirit of actors refashioning (yet respecting) its ur-traditional setting, this is a fascinating and controversial watch, emphasising the uncertainty of faith over the finality of dogma.
★★★★★
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Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
A dented but delightful genre upgrade, steers the archetypal tale of undead bloodsuckers into comfortable Addams Family territory — then radicalises it with a daring Nietzschean twist. Beautifully shot, wrapped in nighttime neon, it’s a slightly misaligned tale, to be sure — yet also a clever, charming one.
★★★☆☆
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Freud’s Last Session
Freud and C.S. Lewis converse, at length, about the meaning of god in a godless world, in this elegant meditation on mortality — while WW2, and the end of the world, begin. Smooth and enjoyable as a gorgeous piece of chamber music, its stage roots and intellectualism visible and unapologetic, giving it core strength, and its only (minor) flaw.
★★★★☆
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Surveilled
Lukewarm doc nevertheless sees award-winning journalist Ronan Farrow hot on the trail of Pegasus, a commercial spyware developed by the Israeli NSO Group, devised for government use against criminals and terrorists, yet also utilised to target activists, politicians, journalists, their families, or any ordinary citizen that ‘falls out of line’.
★★☆☆☆
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filmology
Chernobyl HBO: Seeing In The Dark
The only way to look at Chernobyl is through the complex ocular shield of the camera, otherwise we stare at Medusa’s face, unprotected — an open nuclear reactor core burning…
The ABC Murders & Fascism Redux
Malkovich is a Poirot that lives in perpetual mourning, in a history hiding underneath its own frayed repeats. It’s 1933 Britain. Fascism as collective narcissism. Narcissism as ultimate isolation from life…
Art psychotherapy, psychology of cinema, psychology and alchemy, alchemical symbolism in art, female gaze, transpersonal psychology, post-jungian analysis, cinema therapy, spectatorship, visual anthropology, cinéma vérité, experimental cinema, film noir, psychogeography, shamanism, anthropology of magic.
FILM THEORY
Archetypal Enchantment And The Twin Of David Lynch
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…
Fallen Women of Hollywood Melodrama: 1930s-1950s
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.
FILM CULTURE
2001: A Space Odyssey on 70mm. An Interview With A Magician.
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 