Latest Updates - Michael Sarnoski

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

This is a wonderful, beautiful movie.

To characterise it, it is like a beautifully shot, slow-burn, lo-fi, poetic, and non-violent (relatively speaking) / pacifist John Wick.

Man in woods with truffle pig has said pig stolen, in a violent raid one night, so he sets out to get it back, with the aid of his young flashy truffle buying entrepreneur associate.

Given how prolific Nicolas Cage is these days, and how a certain amount of stereotyping, and therefore self-perpetuating type-casting means he more often than not turns up in the nuttier end of the movie spectrum, and being nutty and extreme in his performances... You forget he is capable of this kind of deep, understated, subtlety in his acting, which here, is sublime.

...He really captures the essence of a man who has been alone too long in the woods, without much, if any human contact, and so has become a little glacial and non-communicative, or at the very least, non-expressive.

(So the polar opposite of what you have come to expect from him - Needs to do more of this kind of role!)

But the movie, and the story itself, is brilliantly told, starting, as it does, with that Wickian style of simple motivating factor, to set the man in motion, and by degrees, as he goes back into society, and we see him and the character he has become, now set in stark contrast against the world he left behind long ago, and also, the revelations that this brings, as he goes... We learn who he once was, and how and why he went wild in the first place.

The story, therefore, is not about the pig, it's about him.

(The pig is just the reason for him to continue to exist)

And other than the obvious Wick set up, for some reason, Jack And The Beanstalk popped in to my head, as if the Giant succeeded in coming down to earth to retrieve his goose that laid the golden eggs... so a slight suggestion of this being a fable, or modern Neo-Noir (as they call this kind of mood movie these days) fairy tale.

But this is a very artistically shot and made movie, that would probably, in terms of texture, and tone, sit happily alongside something like Drive, or You Were Never Really Here.

Brilliant, and I shall certainly be watching this one again.

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

This is a wonderful, beautiful movie.

To characterise it, it is like a beautifully shot, slow-burn, lo-fi, poetic, and non-violent (relatively speaking) / pacifist John Wick.

Man in woods with truffle pig has said pig stolen, in a violent raid one night, so he sets out to get it back, with the aid of his young flashy truffle buying entrepreneur associate.

Given how prolific Nicolas Cage is these days, and how a certain amount of stereotyping, and therefore self-perpetuating type-casting means he more often than not turns up in the nuttier end of the movie spectrum, and being nutty and extreme in his performances... You forget he is capable of this kind of deep, understated, subtlety in his acting, which here, is sublime.

...He really captures the essence of a man who has been alone too long in the woods, without much, if any human contact, and so has become a little glacial and non-communicative, or at the very least, non-expressive.

(So the polar opposite of what you have come to expect from him - Needs to do more of this kind of role!)

But the movie, and the story itself, is brilliantly told, starting, as it does, with that Wickian style of simple motivating factor, to set the man in motion, and by degrees, as he goes back into society, and we see him and the character he has become, now set in stark contrast against the world he left behind long ago, and also, the revelations that this brings, as he goes... We learn who he once was, and how and why he went wild in the first place.

The story, therefore, is not about the pig, it's about him.

(The pig is just the reason for him to continue to exist)

And other than the obvious Wick set up, for some reason, Jack And The Beanstalk popped in to my head, as if the Giant succeeded in coming down to earth to retrieve his goose that laid the golden eggs... so a slight suggestion of this being a fable, or modern Neo-Noir (as they call this kind of mood movie these days) fairy tale.

But this is a very artistically shot and made movie, that would probably, in terms of texture, and tone, sit happily alongside something like Drive, or You Were Never Really Here.

Brilliant, and I shall certainly be watching this one again.