Osburnt: Dispatches From a Life Seared by the Arts

  • Ex Machina

    Ex Machina

    EX MACHINA is a sci-fi thriller from Alex Garland on the theme of artificial intelligence. It raises the familiar questions – moral, ethical, ontological, political – with which the issue is fraught. Is a fully realized AI effectively human, or its equivalent; is it conscious (whatever that means) and morally aware; would it have a…

  • From the Earth to the Moon

    From the Earth to the Moon

    He was, when I was growing up, a boy in a normative Middle American family, essential reading, along with Conan Doyle, Tolkien, and a few others. But I have the sense, hoping that I am wrong, that Jules Verne is not, at least in this country, so much read anymore. Part of this is simply…

  • Under the Skin

    Under the Skin

    There have been three Scarlett Johansson movies in a row about the moral complexities of physical attraction and human relations in the virtual age, and beyond: Don Jon, in which she compares unfavorably, in the eyes of a boyfriend, with online porn; Her, in which she is the voice of a sultry operating system who…

  • Her

    Her

    The advance press for Under the Skin, by virtue of playing none-too-subtly upon the presence in the film of Scarlett Johansson in a state of undress, has prompted me to revisit my thoughts on Spike Jonze‘s HER, which I didn’t manage to set down when first I saw it. Johansson, of course, plays the voice…

  • The East

    The East

    What I like about Brit Marling, who co-wrote (with director Zal Batmanglij) and stars in THE EAST, is that you can see her thinking, not in a mugging, brow-wrinkling, eyes-going-wide way, but in the faintest modulations of expression, a parted lip, a linger in the look, a shift in the weight. There is something alert…

  • Holy Motors

    Holy Motors

    In HOLY MOTORS Denis Lavant plays Oscar, a gnarly and dissipated man who is driven around Paris in a limousine to keep “appointments” for which he dons costume and makeup and performs violent or otherwise transgressive acts. It is a sort of invisible theater for clueless onlookers the purpose of which is, at least initially,…

  • Cosmopolis

    Cosmopolis

    The 2003 novel by Don DeLillo (which I have not read) may have been a cautionary tale, but David Cronenberg’s film version of COSMOPOLIS is a dystopian fantasy of the present. The financialization of the world economy is complete. The captains of finance are threatened by mobs in Times Square and knife attacks on live…

  • 4:44 • Melancholia

    4:44 • Melancholia

    The last day on earth, if it were known in advance and calculated to the minute, would surely be the greatest case of a watched pot never boiling in history, until, of course, it did.  With 4:44: THE LAST DAY ON EARTH, Abel Ferrara perfectly captures the strange combination of ennui, anxiety, wonder, fear, panic, and…

  • The Future

    The Future

    I missed this in New York and was intrigued but somewhat doubtful as to how I would feel about it. So I was glad to have the chance to see it in Madrid with the added interest of Spanish subtitles. I need not have worried. Miranda July’s THE FUTURE is eccentrically lovely, a small act…

  • Inception

    Inception

    Christopher Nolan‘s INCEPTION. The themes are familiar. Think Philip K. Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Jorge Luis Borges, even Calderón, Cervantes, Shakespeare. Dreams within dreams, life as a dream, the universe dreamed by the maker. The filmmaking is deft, the timing exquisite, the rhythms gripping. Yes, there are the expected twists (or not) and the predictable ending…