Film Picks: Dr. Strangelove, Blink Twice and Hijack 1971
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George C. Scott (left) and Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove.
PHOTO: COLUMBIA PICTURES
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Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (PG)
95 minutes
No film has matched this one in capturing Cold War paranoia while reaching the same heights in satirical comedy. Its takedown of the American war machine, reducing it to the antics of powerful men fetishising the apocalypse, is more relevant than ever.
Screened as part of indie cinema The Projector’s Happy Birthday Kubrick programme, the black comedy, released in 1964, has earned its place as a classic primarily through the work of three contributors: director and co-writer Stanley Kubrick, actor Peter Sellers and screenwriter Terry Southern.
Kubrick’s stylised, black-and-white visuals reinforced Southern’s piquant dialogue, while British comedian Sellers, playing three roles with plenty of ad-libbing, gives the film its absurdist zing.
After a crazed officer sends a fleet of bombers to deliver a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, the President, a German-American scientist with odd tics and a Royal Air Force officer – all played by Sellers – clumsily attempt to prevent the end of the world.
Nominated for Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor for Sellers, the film has since become known as a towering achievement in comedy and social commentary.
Where: The Projector, 05-00 Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Road str.sg/kns7
MRT: Nicoll Highway
When: Aug 29, 8.30pm
Admission: $11.50 for standard tickets
Info:
Blink Twice (M18)
103 minutes, now showing
★★★★☆
Blink Twice stars Channing Tatum and Naomi Ackie.
PHOTO: WBEI
Actress Zoe Kravitz (The Batman, 2022) makes a remarkably assured debut as Blink Twice’s director and co-writer.
Waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) and co-worker Jess (Alia Shawkat) crash a party held by tech mogul Slater (Channing Tatum).
There is chemistry between Frida and Slater, so when the billionaire invites the women to vacation on his private island, Frida agrees. There, they meet Slater’s close male friends, as well as a group of women invited to the event. Everyone slips into a sybaritic routine of poolside cocktails, fine wines and exquisite food, but Frida is troubled by signs that not everything is as it seems.
The first half of the film is built as an idealised romance. Here, Kravitz leans hard on the tropes – Frida is a pauper meeting a handsome prince. She is wined and dined, and swept off her feet.
The odd details that threaten to burst her bubble arrive subtly – this is not a film of jump scares. Rather, the troubling discoveries add to a mounting sense of unease. By the final act, that tension is released in a well-earned burst of violence.
Blink Twice can be read as a comment about the gender power imbalance, domestic violence and the oppression that disadvantaged groups suffer to support a few white men at the top of the pyramid.
To Kravitz’s credit, these themes present themselves without didacticism. In her hands, all that matters is that Frida makes it out alive.
Hijack 1971 (NC16)
100 minutes, now showing
★★★☆☆
Ha Jung-woo in Hijack 1971.
PHOTO: SONY PICTURES
In January 1971, domestic airliner Korean Air F-27, departing from Sokcho and bound for Seoul, is commandeered and diverted to North Korea by a mad bomber.
A prologue set in 1969 introduces Tae-in (Ha Jung-woo) as an Air Force pilot dishonourably discharged for refusing orders to disable another such defecting aircraft.
He is now the first officer on board.
The hijacker is an aggrieved 22-year-old (Yeo Jin-goo), who endured torture and imprisonment under false charges of being a communist spy.
Based on a true story, the action begins after the hijacker detonates a hand grenade shortly after take-off to seize control of the cockpit. After the explosion blinds the captain (Sung Dong-il), Tae-in becomes responsible for the safe return of the 51 panicky passengers, with only a young flight attendant (Chae Soo-bin) to assist him.
Despite the familiar genre elements, their hour-long fight for survival is well-executed.
First-time feature director Kim Sung-han filmed the chaotic action inside an actual F-27. He is also precise in his reconstruction of this darkest period in post-war Korea when historic intra-peninsula tensions held everyone hostage to paranoia and mistrust.
