Category: Our Critics

Director Lars von Trier shows the Earth’s destruction at the outset of Melancholia – perhaps to spare viewers two hours of increasing anxiety or maybe just to demonstrate even to potential walk-outs that he is unafraid do away with the whole planet in a cosmic collision.

Moviegoers could be forgiven for writing off what advertising presents as a next-generation clone of 300 and Clash of the Titans. But the third picture from Tarsem Singh – known professionally as Tarsem – has something no sword-and-sorcery forebear has ever possessed: Tarsem himself.

“You give me a time and a place, and I give you a window,” explains the Driver (Ryan Gosling), otherwise unnamed. “Anything happens in that five minutes and I’m yours no matter what. Anything a minute either side of that and you’re on your own.”

As a self-professed cinephile, when I was assigned to review an adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, the kick-off to Gladstone Theatre’s 2011-12 season, I walked into the Sept. 7 performance with certain expectations: of murder, mystery and intrigue cloaked in high-contrast lighting and English accents.