Never have remakes been more prominent in the film industry than today. There is still a solid amount of original content, but studios and filmmakers are especially drawn to already existing films, taking them and altering them to their own vision. The outcome is undoubtedly very hit-and-miss. Sometimes remakes can be successful if they improve upon, modernize or tell a story in a new light – and in rare cases are better than the original. Other times, remakes serve no purpose at all, and are simply a carbon-copy of their source material. Continue reading

Vortex is being praised as Gaspar Noé’s most humanist film to date. At first glance, that seems to say more about his other movies than this one. Vortex doesn’t have anything as agonizing as Irréversible’s infamous, 10-minute rape scene — very few movies do — and while Noé once again shows off some camera trickery, he’s not using it to assault the senses as he did in Enter the Void. But Vortex is, in its own way, just as harrowing a watch as either of those movies: instead of hideous violence or lurid imagery, it stares unblinkingly at the horrors of old age and the inevitability of death. Irréversible ended (or began – it’s complicated) with the words “time destroys everything,” and Vortex demonstrates just what that means. The fate of the elderly couple at the film’s center will eventually befall us all: the destruction of the mind, the body, and the self. Vortex presents a dungeon’s worth of torture devices and promises that, one day, they will be used on you. Continue reading