On the Beach

We live in a time when mainstream film production is mostly fucked, with Hollywood eating itself with remakes and remakes of remakes and digital versions of new classics, cinemas deploying mostly overblown CGI coloring books (the more effects in the battle of Marvel and DC Comics, the better, and the Transformers get their due too). Only some of the horror and indie scene has retained its charm – I'm not at all fond of this direction cinema has taken over the last decade. I guess I'm getting older and I don't keep my finger on the pulse of the times (and mostly I don't want to), so films like this are a balm for my soul. A slowly, deliberately told story, with impeccable direction of the actors, yet the central theme of the apocalypse is approached in a novel, refreshing way – we don't see it, but we feel it through the dialogue, even as the surroundings go on with their normal rituals. I've always understood and liked Stanley Kramer's films. Paraphrasing Mozart: "Stanley, your fellow knuckleheads understand you." :o) (17/05/2016)