At this point in history, it seems that there are two kinds of movies about September 11, 2001: -The first kind pokes us in the eyes and shakes us back and forth and slaps us on the face screaming “ZOMG NINELEVEN NINELVEN!” over and over again. This is the United 93 9/11 Film. -The second […]
“The reason I did that film was that I was dead broke and needed to do any film. I would have done Godzilla Goes to Paris.” -Wes Craven, on The Hills Have Eyes, Part 2 (1985) There’s no possible way to argue that The Hills Have Eyes II is not a bad movie, but it […]
A film that liberally quotes from the stylebook of Stanley Kubrick ought to be many things before it is “forgettable,” but Colour Me Kubrick, the story of a low-rent conman who pretended to be the director during the first half of the 1990s, is not just forgettable, it is the Platonic Ideal of a movie […]
First, let us confront one of the great truths of cinema that people don’t typically like to talk about: the way you see a film has a significant influence on its effect. I don’t just mean “big room in the dark” vs. “on TV”; print quality, the seat you’re in, the speakers used for the […]
It is not exactly the case that TMNT (to give the new film story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles its proper, if clunky, title) destroys the fond memories of my childhood. If anything, I have a horrible feeling that it is perfectly respectful to the original comic, TV series and films in all their […]
The popular conception of Frank Capra as a director of mindless sentimentalities doesn’t hold up very well. Yes, it’s wholly impossible to regard such films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town as anything but simply fables about purity overcoming corruption, but it’s not as easy at it appears to […]
Such a delicate film is The Namesake, and such a sweet relief from the exceptionally draining run of crap I’d gotten myself stuck in recently! It’s a simple thing, but made with obvious care by the perpetually underrated Mira Nair, and its gentle humanism is like a breeze of fresh spring air. Ouch, that was […]
In I Think I Love My Wife, director Chris Rock’s remake of a film by Eric Rohmer- … I’m very sorry, I appear to have thrown up in my mouth a little bit. Oh, I kid Rock, the film’s not all that terrible. And it’s also not all that good. Which still puts it pretty […]
To the surprise of no-one at all, the new romantic time-travel thriller Premonition fails in almost every way, but there is one particular way in which it is extremely good and important: it is the English-language debut of director Mennan Yapo, whose name is fantastic. There should be more fantastically-named filmmakers. But as a drama, […]
There are many little flaws in writer Leigh Whannell and director James Wan’s Dead Silence and one great: this great flaw is that the film stakes everything upon our native fear of ventriloquist dummies. This is a classic gambit to take: many films and TV shows over the years have banked on the exact same […]
It is the traditional order of things that movies set in college, and also movies that are set in the mid-1980s and scored entirely with New Wave singles, will be high-pitched and manic. So I do admire the British rom-com Starter for 10 in this way, at least: it possesses a low-key, laid-back energy that […]
“If we dare to tell the truth about the past, perhaps we shall dare tell the truth about the present.” -Ken Loach, 2006 Cannes Film Festival “A bullet pierced my true love’s side in life’s young spring so early And on my breast in blood she died while soft winds shook the barley.” -Robert Dwyer […]
