The Judd Apatow brand of comedy has dominated the genre
for the better part of the last ten years. His influence extends far beyond the
handful of films he’s directed himself into a host of other films that he’s
also produced, many of them featuring actors he’s fond of using in his own
films. His films don’t go for the simple gross-out and zany laughs of the
Farrelly brothers. They rarely rely on shock value. They’re more like
situational comedy with believable situations, unlike what you get from your
average popular TV sitcom. His writing is often insightful, replete with astute
observations of human behavior, even if it’s usually from the eccentric limit
of the spectrum. In his latest (only his fourth as writer and director) film, This Is 40, he returns to peripheral
characters created for his 2007 comedy Knocked
Up, crafting a story around a married couple with two daughters and their
attempts to deal with their changing lives as they reach middle age.
A blog mostly dedicated to cinema (including both new and old film reviews; commentary; and as the URL suggests - movie lists, although it has been lacking in this area to be honest), but on occasion touching on other areas of personal interest to me.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Special 400th Movie Review: It's a Wonderful Life
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making
other plans.” – John Lennon
Words of wisdom uttered 35 years too late for George
Bailey to take them to heart. Who, upon reaching middle age, hasn’t felt that
sense of loss at having failed to achieve the ambitions of youth? Who actually
fulfills all the dreams he has before growing up and settling into a life of
adulthood? And who among us truly appreciates the riches we have when all we
can see are missed opportunities? It’s a story at least as old as the
Industrial Age, when increased leisure time for most people meant the possibility
of doing things most people would never have dreamed about. George Bailey has
become an enduring cinematic character because he embodies all those universal
characteristics of failed ambitions and dreams deferred or lost. George
believes his life is disappointing and sad. This is just another aspect of his
universality. For it sometimes takes an outsider to point out just how fulfilling
our lives truly are – in fiction anyway.
The Fitzgerald Family Christmas Movie Review
Every family has troubles and internal drama. It’s very
easy to spot it in other families, but to turn the lens inward and examine your
own circumstances is difficult. We have a tendency to always think of ourselves
as reasonable despite evidence to the contrary. Harder still is to turn a
literal lens onto a family’s problems and conflicts and shape it from paper to
screen into a compelling story that people might learn something from. Edward
Burns has been trying to do that since his independent filmmaking career began
auspiciously more than fifteen years ago during the American renaissance (which
turned out to be the last dying gap) of indie films.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Jack Reacher Movie Review
It has been so long since I’ve been both truly surprised
and genuinely thrilled at the movies that I’d almost forgotten the feeling, but
Jack Reacher reminded me of exactly
the reason why I love sitting in a darkened cinema several dozen times a year.
It is not the best movie I’ve ever seen. It’s not even the best movie I’ve seen
this year. But it did exactly what I expect an action thriller to do and it did
it competently, excitingly, originally, and without pandering to the lowest
common denominator audience members. I loved this movie. I loved it almost
unequivocally. I loved it for all the reasons it could have been a standard
genre film, but wasn’t. Loved it for all the ways it managed to enthrall me
from one minute to the next. Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote the hugely
popular (though not well-liked by me) The
Usual Suspects, adapted the story from the eponymous character created by
author Lee Child and more specifically from one of the sixteen books featuring
Jack Reacher as the main character.
Monday, December 24, 2012
The Bourne Legacy Movie Review
Tony Gilroy, so desperate along with Universal Studios,
to continue the cash cow of the Jason Bourne film series that he personally
crafted and adapted from books to films, went ahead with a fourth film even
after Matt Damon, the series’ eponymous hero, bowed out. How can you have a
Bourne film without Bourne? They could have decided to make it something like
the Bond series, replacing the actor periodically as they age out of the role,
providing the character contemporary problems to confront. But then it would
have run the risk of copycat syndrome, I guess. So instead Gilroy, with the
help of his brother Dan, decided with The
Bourne Legacy to keep it all in the same universe, but provide a new
protagonist in Aaron Cross, a super-assassin involved in a program similar to
the Treadstone project that created Bourne. It’s an expansion of the Robert
Ludlum series of books, taking the title, but nothing of the story, from the
fourth book, which wasn’t even written by Ludlum. Confused? It doesn’t matter
because The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum had already
deviated far from Ludlum’s novels.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Slow going with the reviews
I've had a hard time motivating myself this month to plow through the reviews of the films I've watched. So I have a backlog and I just keep watching more movies rather than write. My original goal when I started this blog was to write on every movie I watch. I've come pretty close to keeping up with that.
Now I'm not only behind in reviews for the end of the year trying to cram them in before the Oscar nominations on January 10, but I'm behind on basic film viewing. I have so many films in the cinema to see now and I lost quite a bit of time this week because I was sick on Monday and Tuesday, my days off from my regular paying job. Now we've got Christmas coming, I've got my own party I'm throwing tomorrow, which requires all day preparation. Then I'm working every day until next Friday. So I will try to get through it all, but a lot of films and reviews may have to wait until after the new year.
Also, I'm seriously considering re-evaluating my approach to what I choose to write about. After nearly three years of this, it's getting to be too much of a commitment to write a review for every movie I watch and it leaves so little time for other, perhaps more interesting, projects I'd like to tackle here. More on this subject after the awards season wraps in late February.
Rust and Bone Movie Review
Living principally on a diet of Hollywood cinema, it
would be easy to believe that there’s only one way to tell a story of physical
disability. American movies handle similar material in roughly the same formula
again and again. Even when it’s done competently, it’s not any more interesting
or groundbreaking than the last time it was done well. This year, French cinema
has offered up two examples (at least among films that found American
distribution) of the way the film medium can tell a story of a character with a
severe physical handicap and not make it maudlin, manipulative, and utterly
predictable. The first was The
Intouchables, which, had it opened later in the year, would almost
certainly be a serious awards contender. The second is Rust and Bone, which has recently generated some Oscar buzz. Both
films have been nominated for the Golden Globe for Foreign Language Film, but
Academy rules limit one film per country and France selected the former.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Sensibility wins out over sensitivity
I'm not immune to the devastating emotional impact of the school massacre in Newtown, CT. It was a terrible tragedy and I can't imagine being a resident in that town, let alone a parent of one of the murdered children.
But at the same time, I think we have a tendency to, in the name of being sensitive, reduce or eliminate anything that could possibly cause discomfort to anyone affected by tragedies of that nature. Movie studios reduced the scope of their premiers for the films Jack Reacher and Django Unchained, both violent films featuring their fair share of gunfire. In the name of good taste, I have little problem with that. There's a difference between reveling at a party for a violent murderous film days after an unspeakable act of violence killed 26 people, 20 of whom were small children, and leaving in a joke that, within the context of the film, has nothing at all to do with actual child murder.
I'm referring to director Judd Apatow's decision to leave a joke in his new film, This is 40
The joke involves references to child murder which, of course, in light of what happened last week, takes on an entirely new meaning for most people. Certainly, many people watching the film will immediately call to mind the horrors of watching the news reports. Perhaps as an artistic decision it might have been wise for Apatow to remove the joke because who wants an audience thinking of actual real life child murders in the middle of a comedy? But if the joke is removed simply because it could make some people uncomfortable, then we cross the line into that territory I dread we will continue to fall deeper and deeper into: nobody should ever feel bad about anything ever. We see this attitude constantly and quite frankly, I think it's making us into a nation of frightened little kittens.
So I applaud Apatow for making the decision to leave the joke in the film if for no other reason than that it might make people briefly uncomfortable only to soon discover that nothing terrible comes from that fleeting feeling.
Let's please stem the tide of transforming ourselves into a nation of pussies.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Jiro Dreams of Sushi Movie Review
Visually splendid, but lacking depth, David Gelb’s Jiro Dreams of Sushi, certainly left my
mouth watering for the delectable raw fish preparations that have exploded in
popularity in the last decade. The Jiro of the title is the 85 year old chef
and owner of a tiny ten seat sushi restaurant in a basement in Tokyo. It has
twice been awarded three stars by the Michelin Guide, an honor that suggests
it’s worth a trip to that country just to eat in the restaurant, where the menu
is determined based on quality and availability that day, and perfection is the
only standard by which Jiro judges the food.
Monday, December 17, 2012
25 Years Ago This Month: Empire of the Sun Movie Review
There are three images that stand out in Steven
Spielberg’s WWII drama Empire of the Sun
that help define the film as a coming of age and loss of innocence tale. The
first is of a boy becoming separated from his parents in a throng of Chinese
citizens fleeing Shanghai as the Japanese invasion begins. The second is the
same boy being slapped in the face by a Chinese household servant whom he has
probably spent his short life bossing around. The third and most powerful is
when the boy witnesses the flash of light from the Nagasaki bomb, a moment that
heralds both the boy’s passage into a new world and more grown up life and the
loss of innocence of humanity, which had definitively demonstrated the ability
to destroy itself.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
From My Collection - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Movie Review
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord
of the Rings trilogy must pack so much into those novels that it’s a minor
miracle they were ever made into successful films. I’ve never read the books,
of course, but you get a sense by the third installment of director Peter
Jackson’s epic trilogy of adaptations that the final book is replete with an
abundance of minor and secondary characters all requiring a closing to their
arcs. The effect is a film that is bloated and overblown, but at the same time
a visual wallop and a great piece of entertainment filmmaking.
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Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Hitchcock Movie Review
There is a speech delivered by Helen Mirren in Hitchcock that begins bluntly and
forcefully, before becoming one of those acting moments that gets played over
and over again at awards shows. It’s a moment of performance that can so
quickly and easily become overwrought, but then you realize that Mirren is an
actress of incredible skill, subtlety, and professionalism that she won’t let
her performance overshadow her character. She plays Alma Reville, the great
director Alfred Hitchcock’s long-suffering wife and behind-the-scenes
collaborator. She holds the film together and although Hitchcock is ostensibly concerned with the making of Psycho, that’s really just a backdrop
for the way their marriage functioned and occasionally faltered.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
25 Years Ago This Month: December 1987
Movie release schedules were not all that different 25 years ago. Studios saved their best films for the very end of the year, just like they do today, in order to be fresh in awards voters' minds. The result is that a lot of deserving films released earlier in the year are largely ignored. The December 1987 film releases garnered a combined total of 28 Academy Award nomination. If we add The Last Emperor, which had a limited release in late November followed by a wider December release, that makes 37 nominations spread over ten films.
In Empire of the Sun, Steven Spielberg returned to WWII, subject matter that has been at the crux of no fewer than six of the films he's directed. Christian Bale starred in the film about a boy from a wealthy British family living in Shanghai who finds himself in a Japanese internment camp after the occupation begins.
In Empire of the Sun, Steven Spielberg returned to WWII, subject matter that has been at the crux of no fewer than six of the films he's directed. Christian Bale starred in the film about a boy from a wealthy British family living in Shanghai who finds himself in a Japanese internment camp after the occupation begins.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Life of Pi Movie Review
I have never
agreed with the general sentiment that “the book was better than the movie.”
This has always seemed a meaningless assertion to me. Books and movies might
set out to accomplish a similar task – telling a story – but the ways they go
about it could hardly be less similar. Books have the space to fill in details
you can’t possibly bring to light in a film. A reader is privy to setting
descriptions, histories, character development and inner thoughts that often
can’t be represented on the screen. A movie does the imagining for the viewer.
Whereas a book allows a reader to visualize images evoked by the words on the
page, a film director, cinematographer, writer, etc., present their personal
visualizations, which most likely don’t mesh with yours. What we need to test
is whether or not the film adaptation of a book is 1) some sort of faithful
adaptation and 2) good on its own terms by the standards laid out through
cinema history. It doesn’t matter if the movie tells the same story in the same
exact way as the book. All that matters is that the movie works. Does it draw
you in? Do you learn enough about the characters to care about their fates? Is
the story moving?
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
From My Collection - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Movie Review
Eowyn tests Aragorn's fealty to his beloved in The Two Towers. |
As much as I loved The Fellowship of the Ring is as disappointed as I was in The Two Towers. Except in its magnificent closing epic battle, it
failed to inspire a sense of awe. Everything I admired about the first film was
largely absent in the second. This includes the focused storytelling that had
as its centerpiece a group of men on a quest. Now the fellowship was fractured,
it felt like three different stories. And the toggling back and forth left me
feeling impatient and restless. I don't know that there was any way for screenwriters Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Fran Walsh to get around that. It's a style of 'cutting' that works fine in the format of a novel, but for a three hour plus film it grows tedious.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
The Last Emperor Movie Review: 25 Years Ago
The Last Emperor was released in New York and Los Angeles 25 years ago last month, but received its wide release in December 1987. So I revisit the film in between the two months. Look for a new 25 Years Ago review later this month when I take a look at Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun.
What a strange film is Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. Twenty-five years
later it still has a powerful resonance. It remains a gorgeous visual piece
with remarkable costumes, art direction, and set decoration. It helps that the
production was given unprecedented access by the Chinese government to film in
the Forbidden City. I’m not sure any set could stand in as effectively for the
real thing, which is imposing with its mammoth surrounding walls and
impenetrable gates that keep the young emperor locked away for all of his
youth. But here is a historical epic about a man who is not a hero. He made no
great impact on a way of life, or any government, or even a great number of
individuals for that matter. Although the story is about the man who happened
to be the last imperial ruler of the old feudal China, it is really a
historical view of a China in transition to a Republic and then a Communist
state, with a passive hero at its center.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Silver Linings Playbook Movie Review
Director David O. Russell has become something of a
specialist in staging chaotic family scenarios with emotions running to a fever
pitch and pushing the comedy of the moment nearly to the breaking point. He did
it several times in his sophomore effort Flirting with Disaster, which had Ben Stiller on a cross-country search for his
birth parents, and then most recently in The Fighter with boxer Mark Wahlberg and his girlfriend, played by a tough Amy
Adams, squaring off against his seventeen or so sisters. In Silver Linings Playbook, his newest film
that he both directed and wrote (adapted from the novel by Matthew Quick) brings
together just about every character, lead and supporting, under one roof for a
scene that would be greatly comedic if it weren’t also somewhat tragic at the
same time. It’s a scene that I thought just about went over the edge of reason,
but Russell brings it back to earth before things get out of hand.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Anna Karenina Movie Review
The classics of Russian literature don’t tend to have
definitive film versions, though it may be that Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina changes
that – for a while anyway. There was a Hollywood version in 1948 starring
Vivien Leigh, but it has not stood as an important work of cinematic
adaptation. Generally speaking, the literary adaptations from Hollywood in the
Golden Age offered little in making the works cinematic. They were so often
(and still are, for that matter) like filmed stage plays with sumptuous sets
and intricately patterned costumes and British actors donning an air of
pomposity. These films feel stifled by a desire to be ‘true’ to the material,
making for very boring viewing experiences. To read Anna Karenina should not be the same experience as it is to view
it.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
It's the busy season
I'm now entering my busiest time of year for movie viewing and trips to the cinema. Back in the day I used to see between 75 and 100 films a year in the cinema, with about half of those coming between November and January. The reason for this is obvious to anyone who follows movies and the awards season: most of the best movies, or the prestigious movies anyway, are released in the final months of the year to qualify for awards and remain fresh in voters' minds. I happen to live in one of the two most important film markets in America, but even still, many awards contenders don't open in my area of Long Island until late January or even early February. I often take a trip into Manhattan to play catch up in early January or for films I simply don't want to wait for.
You see, I have made it a point since 1997 to see everything nominated at the Oscars - from Best Picture to Best Sound Editing and Best Foreign Language Film. This is mainly a way to give some focus to my viewing of new films and to remain relevant at the end of the year, but also because I just love the Oscars. It's the only award in film that I really care about, excepting passing interest in critics groups awards and the awards given at the Cannes Film Festival. Part of this project involves anticipating what I think has a chance of scoring a nomination in some category somewhere, so I end up seeing a lot of crap because maybe it will get a nod for Best Song or Best Costume Design. It also means I see lots of movies that don't get nominated.
What it really means is that by the end of November I've got an unmanageable list of movies to see. If you look at the left hand sidebar showing the last 10 movies I've watched, you'll find all of them are 2012 releases, six seen in the cinema.
So in the next six weeks, expect to see regular reviews of new films, but a relative dearth of older film reviews.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Wreck-It Ralph Movie Review
Wreck-It Ralph
feels like it should have been a Pixar Animation Studios project. The premise
is exactly the kind of clever idea they latch onto and develop into viable
material for an animated feature film. The screenplay by Phil Johnston and
Jennifer Lee is from a story by Johnston, Rich Moore, and Jim Reardon. Moore,
who learned his animation directing chops on “The Simpsons” and “Futurama” – where
he likely learned a great deal about handling culturally relevant material –
directed. It concerns a video game villain, the titular Ralph, who has grown
weary of destroying a building, doing it well, and then looking on as the game’s
hero is rewarded with medal upon medal. Thirty years of the same actions over and
over will do that to a guy. He desires the chance to be the hero for once, but
his Bad-Anon support group (featuring one of the Pac Man ghosts and King Kroopa
from Mario Bros.) tell him he can’t change who he is. You see one of the film’s
object lessons in the works from here.
25 Years Ago This Month: November 1987
Dark Shadows Movie Review
I’ll say off the bat that I was primed to severely
dislike Dark Shadows, Tim Burton’s updating
of the 1960s daytime soap opera about a gothic manor in Maine with strange
supernatural occurrences. I have been less than enthusiastic – to put it diplomatically
– about most of Burton’s work in the last ten years. When I think back on his
career as a director, what I’ve enjoyed most are his films that are straight
comedies. He has a real knack for the bizarrely funny and whimsically macabre.
I think of Beetlejuice, Mars Attacks!, and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure as his most enjoyable features. Recent
films like Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice in Wonderland have been simply
odd, overblown and bloated. Then there was the matter of the advertising for Dark Shadows, which I thought made it
look like a 1970s kitsch piece featuring yet another in a long and increasingly
exhaustive series of offbeat Johnny Depp performances (his eighth in
collaboration with Burton). Imagine my immense surprise to find a lighthearted
homage to a TV series that Burton and Depp both claim to have loved as
children.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Flight Movie Review
Most of us remember that remarkable incident of averting
an air disaster when Captain “Sully” Sullenberger successfully ditched a
commercial airliner in the Hudson River alongside the Manhattan skyline after
losing both engines to a flock of geese on takeoff. That man, otherwise
ordinary except that he was suddenly and unexpectedly elevated to hero status
for saving the lives of all on board, became an overnight media sensation. The
talk shows wanted him for five minutes on air. Magazines wanted to delve into
his personal history to find something in his past that led to his calm during
what appeared to be certain death for everyone. What if it had turned out that
he was drunk or high on drugs at the time? Would that negate the good he did in
saving lives? What if the hypothetical alcohol in his system actually helped
him relax enough to safely land the plane on the water? How does that change
our approach to him as a human being and as a pilot?
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Take This Waltz Movie Review
“New things get old.” So says an older woman to a group
of younger women in Sarah Polley’s second directorial feature, Take This Waltz. The scene has three
younger women showering, their bodies in full view of the camera, alongside a
group of older women for whom time has quite clearly caught up with their
bodies, wrinkled and sagging as they are. Yes, new things get old, whether we’re
talking about the supple physical beauty of youth or a husband after five years
of marriage. One of those young women needs to keep this refrain in mind as she
considers an affair with a neighbor.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Lincoln Movie Review
2300 years ago Euclid proclaimed as one of his common
notions that things equal to the same thing are also equal to each other. This
is a founding principle of geometry and necessary for the beginnings of modern
engineering. It seems self-evident, doesn’t it? Of course Thomas Jefferson held
it self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable
rights such as liberty, yet he was himself a slave owner. In Steven Spielberg’s
masterful biopic Lincoln, the 16th
President and drafter of the Emancipation Proclamation tries to rely on
Euclid’s notion to help him in his decisions regarding slavery that will impact
the United States and the terrible Civil War that was entering its fifth bloody
year.
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Monday, November 19, 2012
Cloud Atlas Movie Review
As a film critic I would love to have the luxury of
seeing every new film and writing about it. As this is not a paying job for me,
I have to pick and choose what I see, mostly based on personal preference, but
often choosing films that are popular or important benchmarks. The subject
matter of Cloud Atlas hardly
interested me, although the filmmakers involved certainly did. The Wachowski
siblings, Andy and Lana (formerly Larry) brought us The Matrix trilogy, the first installment of which I think is
filled with wonderful vision, a great story, and brilliant use of visual
effects. I found Tom Tykwer deeply intriguing as a filmmaker with both Run, Lola, Run and The Princess and the Warrior, although admittedly I know nothing of
his work in the past decade. Together these three directors decided to bring
David Mitchell’s complicated 2004 novel which involves six stories in different
time periods and characters that exist as alternate versions of themselves across
time and space.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Skyfall Movie Review: Bond 23
The idea that the James Bond film series needs to be
rebooted doesn’t make a lot of sense. Nearly every film is a reboot because
there’s virtually no continuity between films. Daniel Craig’s first outing as
the superspy 007 in Casino Royale was
a reboot of sorts in the sense that many of the things the Bond series had been
known for were ousted. Neither Miss Moneypenny nor Q made appearances. With Skyfall, Craig’s third turn as Bond, it
becomes clearer that the new series is something akin to a reboot because many
of the old comforts have returned.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
The Sessions Movie Review
One of the universalities of being human, one important
thing that sets us clearly apart from the rest of the animals, is the pleasure,
both physical and emotional, derived from sex. To make that physical connection
with another person is a rite of passage we set for ourselves early on. It’s a
mark that nearly every teenager desperately wants to reach. What if you were
stricken with polio as a boy, your body left stiffened by a disease that wreaks
havoc on your muscles? You’re not exactly paralyzed in the way most of us
understand that condition because you have normal sensory perception throughout
your body. You just can move anything. What if you reached middle age never
having felt the exultation joining together sexually with another person? This
is the beginning of the story in The
Sessions, a true story about poet and journalist Mark O’Brien, who was also
the subject of an Oscar-winning short documentary called Breathing Lessons in the late 90s. O’Brien documented his quest to
lose his virginity in an article titled, “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate.”
Monday, November 12, 2012
From My Collection - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Movie Review
More than anything, I want movies to surprise me. I want
to see something that I haven’t seen before, or see an old story presented in a
unique way. I want my expectations to be exceeded. I never read J.R.R.
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
trilogy. I wasn’t interested as a child. To this day, the genre of fantasy
fiction doesn’t particularly appeal to me. In December 2001 I went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the
Ring because it was expected to be one of the biggest movies of the year.
It was the subject of countless magazine and newspaper articles about the 15
month shooting schedule in New Zealand with Peter Jackson painstakingly
creating a world on film that was already known to millions of loyal fans of
the novels. I walked out of the theater both exceedingly surprised and deeply
moved by both the story and the unbelievable craftsmanship involved in the
making of the film.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
The Master Movie Review
I’ll say this much for Paul Thomas Anderson: he’s one of
the few filmmakers working within the Hollywood system who can consistently
make gutsy and challenging films. He doesn’t pander to any audience; his
endings don’t come wrapped in tight packages; there is no paint-by-numbers to
tell you exactly how to feel and when. He creates emotionally and spiritually
complex works that often leave us scratching our heads and that maybe, just
maybe, leave us a little better off as human beings than when we walked into
his world.
With that said, I’m becoming increasingly frustrated by
his films. I don’t object to their complexity or challenges, but I have
misgivings about the general lack of joy to be found at any moments in The Master. Boogie Nights and Magnolia
are films I can watch over and over, finding joy amid the tremendous sorrow
every time. There was real vibrancy and panache in Anderson’s directing style.
He combined the dexterity of Altman maintaining multiple characters and threads
with the energy of Scorsese. Then he started to go quiet.
Seven Movie Review
Although I saw this when I was already 17, it scared the shit out of me. When I saw it for the first time in the cinema I literally fell out of my chair at the moment when the 'sloth' victim turns out not to be dead. This was one of the most terrifying cinematic experiences I've ever had.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
Seven is the
one film as I reached toward adulthood that really got under my skin in a way
that terrified me. This police procedural thriller about a sadistic serial
killer was created through the use of set design and cinematography that are
just unnerving. I can’t recall another film of its kind that left me so shaken.
It’s unrelenting not only in its sick and ghastly murders, of which we only
ever see the aftermath, but also in its dark and depressing tone, designed
specifically to destroy the audience’s will to go on, the way the rain
continually pours down on the movie’s unnamed city and casts a gloom outside
every window. Even the ending, which ties everything together and offers some
explanation for the apparent irrationality of the killer, is almost entirely without
hope or a denouement.
25 Years Ago This Month: October 1987
David Mamet's first film as director was House of Games, one of the great films about confidence men.
Before Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to the Oscar for Best Director, she once directed a cult vampire film called Near Dark starring Bill Paxton.
The late 80s saw a string of films similar to Like Father, Like Son, in which two people change bodies for a while. In this one medical doctor Dudley Moore and his son, a high school track runner played by Kirk Cameron, accidentally exchange minds after ingesting an Indian potion of some sort.
Movie List: Top Ten Friday the 13th Deaths
So now that I've posted reviews of all the Friday the 13th films along with lists and ratings of all the deaths in those films, I've compiled my Top Ten of all those deaths. For this list I have not considered deaths of Jason or accidental deaths or deaths at the hands of anyone else. Only those perpetrated by Mrs. Voorhees (Friday the 13th); Roy (Friday the 13th: A New Beginning); and Jason (Part II; Part III; Part IV; Part VI; Part VII; Part VIII; Jason Goes to Hell; Jason X; Freddy vs. Jason) have been considered.
In retrospect, my individual ratings were sometimes a little skewed. I have included the rating I applied when I reviewed the film, but in some cases I have chosen a "7" over and "8" because my reaction now is stronger.
Honorable mentions:
- In Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning Junior's head is chopped off while riding his motorcycle in circles whining to his mother about getting his ass kicked earlier (6).
- In Friday the 13th Part 3 Vera has a harpoon fired directly into her eye from long distance (7).
- In Friday the 13th Part 3 Andy gets cut in half as he walks on his hands (6).
- In Freddy vs. Jason Freeburg is sliced completely in half by a machete (7).
In retrospect, my individual ratings were sometimes a little skewed. I have included the rating I applied when I reviewed the film, but in some cases I have chosen a "7" over and "8" because my reaction now is stronger.
Honorable mentions:
- In Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning Junior's head is chopped off while riding his motorcycle in circles whining to his mother about getting his ass kicked earlier (6).
- In Friday the 13th Part 3 Vera has a harpoon fired directly into her eye from long distance (7).
- In Friday the 13th Part 3 Andy gets cut in half as he walks on his hands (6).
- In Freddy vs. Jason Freeburg is sliced completely in half by a machete (7).
10. In Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI Sissy is pulled through an open window, her head is twisted around and removed (8).
Modern Classic Movie Review: The Silence of the Lambs
I probably saw this movie sometime when I was in high school. I was fairly familiar with it and I found it pretty damn frightening. It's not quite a horror movie in the same vein as a slasher film, but I thought it worth including because it's a variation on horror and it was part of my childhood and youth.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
The killer's gaze is turned back on the audience, turning the power structure of the horror film around. |
The Silence of the
Lambs turns the serial killer and slasher film genre on its head by
crafting the most compelling character not as the killer whom the FBI is
hunting, but as the already convicted Hannibal Lecter, who sits in a basement
cell and may have crucial information to help them catch their man. More
remarkable than that is that everyone remembers Lecter as this imposing and
frightening villain, a role that helped Anthony Hopkins win the Best Actor
Oscar, but he is on screen for all of 16 minutes. That speaks to the power of
seduction that he possesses.
Modern Classic Horror Review: Scream
This is the natural closing to my personal journey because it was released during winter break of my first year in college. So I was at the beginning stages of becoming a full-fledged adult and being finished with things like getting scared by horror movies. That said, this was a cinematic experience that genuinely frightened me. This was a slasher film to put a cap on a generation's worth of slasher films that relied heavily on certain conventions. I still think it's a fantastic horror movie, but its effect has certainly worn off and been done to death in the intervening years.
Click here for a list of other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
By the end of 1996 it had been so long since a genuinely
scary horror movie had been in wide release that it seemed like the genre might
be dead forever. Our old friends Freddy, Jason, and Michael had been flogged
into oblivion and people were well attuned to the genre conventions resulting
in audiences that were a lot smarter than those going to see slasher films 15
and 20 years earlier. These conventions included things like the couple that
has sex getting killed; the drug users getting killed; dumb female characters
always making the wrong decisions and getting dead as a result; idiot police
officers; revenge motives rooted in a complicated back story; obvious suspects
as red herrings; and on and on. Kevin Williamson was an aspiring screenwriter
when he wrote Scream and eventually
sold it, after which legendary horror director Wes Craven was hired to direct.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers Movie Review
Because this was released when I was already nearing the end of high school it wasn't really a part of my horror culture when I was a kid. I watched it once when I rented it with a friend, but honestly that was probably when we were in college, past my cutoff year of 1996 for this October series.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
As incredible as it was that Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers improved upon the
quality, or lack therof, of Halloween 4:
The Return of Michael Myers, that’s nothing compared to Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers,
the series’ sixth film. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to criticize here,
but taken as a whole experience it’s more fun, better written and acted, and
scarier than most other horror sequels.
Thanks, Sandy
Hurricane Sandy set me back a little bit. I didn't get to watch a couple more movies I wanted to add to this October project because I was without power all day yesterday. The last two reviews go up today and I still have two horror reviews to write that I hope to post today. Time permitting, I will still watch one more to make it five horror reviews today.
After today it's back to my normal film viewing and posting schedule. And I hope not to watch any horror films for quite some time. I'm tired.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers Movie Review
My familiarity with the Halloween series was always less than Friday the 13th and Nightmare because I found these films much scarier. I was even less familiar with this particular sequel and found watching it again that I remembered little of it in detail.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
You don’t expect any horror movie sequel to be better in
any real measurable way than its predecessor. Sure, I feel that Friday the 13th Part VII: The NewBlood is the best in the series, but that’s splitting hairs. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
breaks the rule by being a noticeable improvement over Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Interestingly, the main
characters and the story are not all that dissimilar. The differences are all
in Dominique Othenin-Girard’s direction.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Witchboard Movie Review
This one I also wonder if my older sister had it on video. I really only remember seeing it once. I think it was already 1992 when she was living back home, so maybe that's why I remember it so well.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
Let me be clear up front that any limited praise I offer
for Witchboard, a 1986 horror movie
about a mishap with a Ouija board, is not meant to suggest that it’s worth
seeking out. It is, by almost every measurable calculus, a hilariously bad
movie. But it happens to aspire to do something more than most horror flick
filmmakers even dream about. Whereas the majority of horror films, especially
in the slasher sub-genre of the 70s and 80s, are interested solely in killing
off a bunch of indistinguishable characters who have nothing interesting to
say, and doing it in varied and gruesome ways.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers Movie Review
I was always much less familiar with the Halloween sequels growing up probably for a combination of two reasons: they weren't as popular and so didn't play on TV as often and they scared me a lot more so I avoided them.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
A writer’s strike was responsible for the production of
the horror movie spoof Student Bodies
in 1981 as well as Halloween 4: The
Return of Michael Myers in 1988. The differences are astounding. Whereas
the earlier film was already written and given production backing by a major
studio looking for non-union projects, the latter was written slapdash by Alan
B. McElroy and a team of story writers in a matter of days to get it finished
before the impending strike was to begin. Believe me, it feels rushed.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Halloween II Movie Review
I had very little memory of this first sequel. Some of it looked familiar as I watched it for this series, but mostly I don't think I ever really saw it.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
These days film sequels are almost obligatory when it
comes to any big budget action, comedy, or horror film. Studios are always
looking to create a franchise cash cow that they can continue milking for
minimal investment and effort. But there was a time when sequels were mostly
limited to horror films. It was a pretty obvious fit. Films produced in the
horror genre were traditionally low budget films written quickly and on the
cheap, using casts of mostly unknown actors (though many of these such as Jamie
Lee Curtis, Kevin Bacon, Johnny Depp, and Jennifer Aniston have gone on to
become stars), shot and produced in an almost guerilla style in a matter of a
few weeks. The popular ones made significant returns on investment, so sequels
were usually inevitable. What’s more, they were (and continue to be) almost
universally excoriated by critics because they tend to be cheap retreads of
what came before. It’s insulting to people like me who spend a great deal of
time watching movies.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
From My Collection: Horror Classic Review of Halloween
For me this was always one of the scariest horror movies of my childhood and youth. I'm not even sure I saw this in its entirety before my teenage years or even before college, but I'm sure I caught pieces of it here and there.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
John Carpenter’s Halloween
remains one of the great classics of the horror genre with good reason. It
spawned a tireless list of copycats that attempted to repeat the formulas of a
low-budget film with a psycho killer picking off young people who take drugs
and have sex. Unfortunately, the writers and directors responsible for films
like Friday the 13th and
even the Halloween sequels forgot
about the great artistry that went into Halloween.
In a way, Carptenter’s original film is the purest of the slasher films. It is simply
constructed and executed from a smart screenplay by Carpenter and Debra Hill.
It features a memorably hunting musical score by Carpenter and a faceless
killer of blank expression and inexplicable motivation upsetting the delicate
balance of suburban America.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Bad Dreams Movie Review
I think my older sister had this on video and that's how I came to see it. My strong memories of it suggest that I saw it more than once, though. I found it scary enough as a kid.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
The entire premise of Bad
Dreams falls apart by listening to the philosophy of the Jim Jones-like
cult figure at the beginning who leads a 1970s hippie youth cult known as Unity
Field in mass suicide. The deepest thing he espouses is that “life and death
are two different states of being.” Whoa! If charismatic cult figures only peddled
such cheap nonsense, they’d have few followers. One young girl escapes the
flaming death trap at the last moment and wakes from her coma thirteen years
later in a psychiatric institution.
Freddy vs. Jason Movie Review
Like with Jason X, this one shouldn't even be included in this October series but for a sense of completion with bothNightmare and Friday. How could I not include it? I have it noted that I saw this in the theater, but I have no memory of that whatsoever. It was released in theaters a week before I left on a three month backpacking trip. I find it hard to believe it was still in theaters when I returned. And I doubt I would have rushed out to see it while I was preparing for such a big trip.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
I wonder how long after acquiring the rights to Friday the 13th it took New
Line executives to start fantasizing a combination movie with A Nightmare on Elm Street. It took more
than ten years to finally get Freddy vs.
Jason into production and then released. Was it worth the wait? Does the
end result provide those who were clamoring for the ultimate confrontation of
80s horror icons with a showdown worthy of the classic status of something like
Godzilla vs. Mothra? I’m not so sure.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Jason X Movie Review
Just like with the previous film in the series eight years earlier, I only watched this for a sense of completion. Technically I shouldn't have even included it in this October series as it's meant to be a personal journey through my childhood memories of horror films, but I also wanted to list out all the deaths in the Friday the 13th series. Also, it just seemed wrong to leave this out. My friend and I rented this ten years ago and had good fun with it.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
I’m trying to imagine how the idea for Jason X was pitched to New Line Cinema
in such a way that they were willing to give it a green light. Not only that,
but it actually got a theatrical release. How do you think they sold an idea
for Jason Voorhees to be frozen and then thawed out 450 years in the future so
that he can continue his killing spree aboard a space ship? “Get this: Jason in
space,” is the only phrase you would need, I suppose. And if that’s how it was
presented, it’s no wonder that what came out the other end of production was
the mind-blowingly bad film I just watched – for the second time! Yes, I
watched it on a lark with a friend many years ago. How could we not? But I had
blocked most of it out. Readers, I assure you that this is a true stinker with
one minor – very minor – saving grace that I still found hysterical.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Student Bodies Movie Review
This was a seminal and important film for my childhood where the horror genre is concerned. I always remembered most of the movie distinctly. Watching it again I pretty much knew exactly what was coming at every moment even though it had probably been twenty years or more since I'd seen it last. This was a movie that my older sister and brother used to watch on TV and laugh through. I found a lot of it quite funny and I'd like to think that wasn't just because I was laughing along with them. Oddly enough, I probably learned about the conventions of the genre mostly from this film and as a result found scary movies more ridiculous after.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
"You Mrs. Malvert." |
Before there was the horror spoof Scary Movie and long before the self-referential and
convention-skewering Scream, there
was Student Bodies, a little known
cult favorite that should have been made on a shoestring budget by amateurs and
then wasted away in a dustbin. It would have but for a stroke of luck in the
form of a Writer’s Guild strike which meant Paramount was willing to bankroll
non-union projects. So a ridiculous satire written and directed by Mickey Rose
(a collaborator on some early Woody Allen films) with a cast of nobodies, most
of whom were making their first movie and never went on to any kind of film
career after, got a sizable budget to work with. It didn’t do very well at the
box office, but later built a small following on cable, where I used to
encounter it as a child.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Movie Review
I rented this in high school not because I thought it would be any good or even because I thought it might scare me, but just out of some kind of loyalty to the series. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to see this thing through to the end. Wasn't scary in the least.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
When the torch for Friday
the 13th was passed from Paramount to New Line in the early 90s,
the series had already gone from bad to worse before passing into Oh My God
That’s Terrible. Jason Goes to Hell: The
Final Friday pushes past the limits of “so bad it’s good” and falls into an
abyss I would like to call “so bad it has virtually no redeeming value and
should never have been considered and those responsible should lower their
heads in shame as they fall on their swords.” It takes the whole mythos of the
franchise, lights it on fire and then pisses on the ashes. It doesn’t even have
the redeeming value of being movie at whose shortcomings you can laugh.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Poltergeist II: The Other Side Movie Review
This film might have scared me even more than the first one. That guy playing Revered Kane is just eerie and scary as hell. Every scene with him stuck with me for a long time, and still does really.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
In your best soft southern drawl: "Are ya lost, little girl?" Good luck sleeping now. |
The success and strong positive reception of Poltergeist pretty much necessitated a
sequel. Sure, most horror movies even in the early 80s had sequels following a
year or two later, but Poltergeist is
not your average horror movie. It has a real story. While it’s easy for most
people to write off the horror genre in its entirety as easily digestible junk
and not ‘real’ movies, this one had a good story and identifiable characters
with real things to say. And their story was not yet complete, both in terms of
the paranormal psychic terror inflicted on them and the unresolved issues of family
dynamics. Poltergeist II is an
admirable follow-up that delves into the story behind the psychic horror that
invaded the Freelings’ home and further develops the patriarch Steven’s
character as a man struggling with his inability to adequately protect his
family.
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