Sports movies are treated like any other genre fare. It’s as though by definition they are automatically of a lower quality. Not art. Not worthy. You know, they often get the suffix ‘just a’ thrown in from of them. It’s just a sport movie. And you know what, most of the time they’d be right. There must be a thousand sports flicks out there, the question is, how many transcend the genre?
Posted in Review
Tagged Academy Awards, bennett miller, brad pitt, chris pratt, jonah hill, moneyball, oscars, sony
How do you make a film that feels vintage yet completely fresh at the same time? And not only that but make it one of the year’s most interesting films from what will be a major new presence on the Hollywood film scene. Yes, an exciting new artist who is interested in making mainstream movies… but with a catch, Nicolas Winding Refn will be delivering ‘Hollywood’ in a whole new package. Drive is bravura filmmaking is ever there was cause for that word and I knew it the moment the hot-pink letters hit the screen after the insanely gripping opening sequence. The hot-pink not only announced the film had arrived but also the filmmaker.
Posted in Review
Tagged albert brooks, carey mullgan, drive, nicolas winding refn, noir, ron perlman
About the only law that I think relates to the genre
is that you should not try to explain, to find neat
explanations for what happens, and that the object of
the thing is to produce a sense of the uncanny. Freud
in his essay on the uncanny wrote that the sense of
the uncanny is the only emotion which is more powerfully
expressed in art than in life, which I found very
illuminating; it didn't help writing the screen-play,
but I think it's an interesting insight into the genre.
And I read an essay by the great master H.P. Lovecraft
where he said that you should never attempt to explain
what happens, as long as what happens stimulates people's
imagination, their sense of the uncanny, their sense of
anxiety and fear. And as long as it doesn't, within itself,
have any obvious inner contradictions, it is just a matter
of, as it were, building on the imagination (imaginary
ideas, surprises, etc.), working in this area of feeling.
Stanley Kubrick, "El Pais Artes" (1980)
Whoever said (whomever said… who… pretty sure whoever) that girls (yes, I know I used girls and not women, it was a conscious choice) aren’t funny has not yet seen Bridesmaids. But don’t get me wrong, as much as the film is a ‘female’ comedy, it’s not only female comedy… it’s just a comedy and a pretty damn funny one at that.
Posted in Review
Tagged bridesmaids, comedy, judd apatow, kristen wiig, melissa mccarthy, paul feig, rose byrne
As much as I worried about this one (let’s face it, the marketing was not good… too much comic relief, not enough Asgard) it delivers, big time. Besides the absolutely pointless addition of 3D, everything works so surprisingly well that I left the theater wanting a lot more of Thor’s hammer… wait, that came out wrong.
Posted in Review
Tagged adaptations, avengers, chris hemsworth, comic books, comics, graphic novels, jane foster, kenneth branagh, marvel, movies, Natalie Portman, thor
This was a huge surprise for me… Fast Five is not only the BEST Fast and Furious movie in the racing series BUT it’s also probably going to contend for best blockbuster of the summer. Why? Because it knows exactly what it is and doesn’t try to be anything more than well shot and choreographed action with a few laughs and a surprisingly big heart.
Posted in Review
Tagged fast and furious, fast and the furious, fast five, justin lin, paul walker, the rock, vin diesel
I had an idea for a show once. Just before the end of At the Movies (I mean the official end, when the show was cancelled not when it stopped being watchable, which was sometime after Richard Roeper joined Roger Ebert after the death of Gene Siskel) I was wondering why no one had tried to do a review show that skewed to the key demographic of movie audiences, namely men thirteen to forty, and then I went online and they exist a plenty…
Posted in Camera Knobs
Tagged 30 days, comingsoon, film pulse, filmpulse, greatest movie ever sold, morgan spurlock
The first shock of this review… I liked Scre4m. Actually, I liked it a lot. Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson re-unite to re-boot this now classic slasher series for a new generation and deliver the best film in the series since the brilliant original.
Posted in Review
Tagged emma roberts, film review, ghostface, horror, movie review, neve campbell, scre4m, scream
There is little doubt that DC has some catching up to do… Sure, they rocked out the two BEST comic-book film adaptations of all-time with Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and The Dark Knight AND they’ve got Green Lantern glowing on the near horizon (with almost super-star Ryan Reynolds) BUT as far as production goes they pale in comparison to their nemesis Marvel.
Posted in Dailies
Tagged chris nolan, henry cavill, man of steel, michael shannon, superman, zack snyder, zod
A little known Greek philosophizer named Aristotle (you may have heard of this guy) once said that “the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.” Well, that may be the case for some works of drama, Hanna comes across as exactly the opposite… namely it’s parts are greater than the film as a whole.
Posted in Review
Friscalating Dusklight 