Review: Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son

Reviews

Bodysong

The perfect fusion of sound and vision

By BRETT MICHEL | December 31, 2007

3.5 Stars

BODYSONG Nothing less than the human life cycle.

Produced in 2002 by FilmFour and the UK Film Council, Simon Pummell’s nearly wordless exploration of nothing less than the human life cycle — from birth through growth to sex, violence, death, and dreams — is only now reaching Boston, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts. The timing couldn’t be better: it’s playing concurrently with Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, and there couldn’t be a more perfect coming-out for an electrifying new voice in movies. I speak of the musical contributions of Jonny Greenwood, the BBC’s composer-in-residence and a member of Radiohead. When Anderson first viewed Pummell’s film, he found Greenwood’s trance-like score revelatory, and that paved the way for his collaboration with Greenwood on There Will Be Blood. Which is not to discredit the story that Pummell, a short-film maker with a background in animation, has assembled, using 100 years of archival footage, some of which may be familiar but most of which will be new. From more than 400 sources, he’s created an operatic narrative of a single human life, a near-perfect fusion of sound and vision. 78 minutes | MFA: January 9, 12, 13, 19, 23

Topics: Reviews , Entertainment, Radiohead, Movies, More

| More

See more deals

view all

[ 02/17 ] Festival Ballet Providence presents UP CLOSE ON HOPE @ Black Box Theater

[ 02/17 ] "Dana Levin: A Classical Realist In the 21st Century," an exhibit of paintings @ Bert Gallery

[ 02/17 ] Mary Poppins @ Providence Performing Arts Center

ARTICLES BY BRETT MICHEL

REVIEW: THIS MEANS WAR | February 16, 2012
What promises to be a modern Jules and Jim (until you realize it's directed by a 43-year-old who calls himself "McG") quickly devolves into Spy vs. Spy territory, only with incompetently staged and edited action and little of that ol' Mad magazine zing.

REVIEW: THE VIRAL FACTOR | January 17, 2012
Made for a modest budget of $17 million — and feeling like it (who needs convincing explosions in an action movie?), Dante Lam's latest still gets the job done from a run-and-gun standpoint.

REVIEW: EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE | January 17, 2012
Too soon? For Stephen Daldry's 9/11 drama, the right time is "never."

REVIEW: THE DIVIDE | January 10, 2012
Many a teleplay for The Twilight Zone threatened atomic Armageddon, and though Frontier(s) director Xavier Gens nukes New York in the opening shots of his latest thriller, he finds more inspiration in the horrors of human nature as seen in the old TV show's episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street."

REVIEW: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL | December 20, 2011
Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) returns to the screen in dramatic fashion as new teammate Jane (Paula Patton) and the returning Benji (Simon Pegg) break him out of a Russian prison.