Ben Riley

Ben Riley

Recent Reviews by Ben

The Act of Killing
5 of 5 stars
9-29-2014
The Double (2014)
4 of 5 stars
5-16-2014

Recent Entries by Ben

The Act of Killing — Review

5 of 5 stars
The Act of Killing

“It is forbidden to murder. Therefore all murderers are punished, unless they kill in large numbers, and to the sound of trumpets.” — Voltaire

Few people are aware that Indonesia saw one of the greatest genocides of the 1960s, in which between 500,000 and 1,000,000 (an Indonesian official has pegged the number at 2.5 million) supposed communists were slaughtered by a right wing military dictatorship. Here are a few facts I found out about it: When reports of the genocide arrived in the US in the sixties, it was seen as triumph for democracy, a proof that the so called domino effect — the…

Read The Review

The Double (2014) — Review

4 of 5 stars

Give a warm welcome to Ben Riley and his first contribution to MovieByte. To be honest, I have been wanting to bring someone onto MovieByte that both tends to have different opinions than my own, and who tends to watch and enjoy different types of films than I do as well. I believe Ben matches that description. As such, he has kindly watched and submitted his first film review of The Double which I was only slightly interested in.

Enjoy!

TJ

More about Ben Riley

The Double (2014)

Richard Ayoade’s The Double is a film that is interesting because, like so many art films, it simultaneously invites and defies interpretation. I could argue that it is an unusual study of masculine self realization; or perhaps, I might say that it is a disturbing depiction of primal male impulses. Is it about individuality being suppressed by the demands of corporate society? Or perhaps a thoughtful rumination on the unique identity? Is it a study on the way a perceptive individual struggles with anima and persona? The Double is, perhaps, all of these things; it is possible that it is none…

Read The Review