Peter Gallagher

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Dreamchild: A Film Essay by Elwin Cotman

Dreamchild, directed by Gavin Millar: “What was that name that Lewis Carroll used to call you?”

“That’s right. Dreamchild.”

That is a beautiful movie poster. Made doubly so by the fact that, in the movie, the moment it illustrates most likely didn’t happen. Dreamchild, the first film made by the Jim Henson Creature Shop without the auteur’s input, is a film about memory. What happened, what we wish had happened, what we wish we could take back. It is also, like the poster, beautiful.Read More »

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With his provocative feature debut, twenty-six-year-old Steven Soderbergh trained his focus on the complexities of human intimacy and deception in the modern age. Housewife Ann (Andie MacDowell) feels distant from her lawyer husband, John (Peter Gallagher), who is sleeping with her sister, Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo). When John’s old friend Graham (a magnetic, Cannes-award-winning James Spader) comes to town, Ann is drawn to the soft-spoken outsider, eventually uncovering his startling private obsession: videotaping women as they confess their deepest desires. A piercingly intelligent and flawlessly performed chamber piece, in which the video camera becomes a charged metaphor for the characters’ isolation, the Palme d’Or–winning sex, lies, and videotape changed the landscape of American film, helping pave the way for the thriving independent scene of the 1990s.Read More »

In the future, humanity has been genetically engineered into four classes, ranging from the decision-making Alphas to the worker class Drones. The notion of individual relationships is outdated and people are encouraged to seek pleasure with anybody else. The use of the drug Soma, which provides instant happiness, is widespread. Bernard Marx is a rising publicity man with the Department of Hatcheries and Conditioning. He and his companion Lenina Crowne fly over the Savage Reservations where people who were born by natural means live outside of civilisation, but their helicopter crashes. One of the Savages, John Cooper, saves them from an attacking mob. Fascinated by John, they bring him back to the city where he becomes an object of curiosity by the sensation-starved populace. However, John also comes to challenge their beliefs about the society they live in.Read More »

For passion, betrayal and murder… there’s still no place like home.

Michael Chambers returns home to celebrate his mother’s marriage. Michael had been ousted from his home town due to his gambling indiscretions and had left his wife to deal with the mess he created. He now must reassimulate back into the town, renew his relationships with his family and friends (and enemies) and, most-of-all, seek out his ex-wife to woo her again. In the process, he obtains a job working with his mother’s new husband as an armored car driver. He almost seems the perfect prodigal son as he finds his niche back in the community and his way back into his ex’s heart. His troubles surmount when he and his wife are caught in the act by her hoodlum boyfriend/fiancée. To get out of this predicament, Michael must concoct a plan to heist of a payroll being carried by his armored car company.Read More »