So, the big techies in the film world would have it that the super-realistic “Real D” 3-D technology is a paradigmatic leap in the art of cinema like sound, color and widescreen were. Okay, let’s stick with that. If the coming of great 3-D is as big a deal as the coming of sound was, […]
It is a truth undeniable that Hellboy II: The Golden Army does not enjoy a particularly robust and tight story; it might not be that much of a mistake, in fact, to claim that its story is a confusing mess. If that’s the sort of thing that’s going to bother you no matter what, then […]
In January, I began this “Top 1000” project with The Leopard, a film about the declining fortunes of the Italian nobility during the Risorgimento. It was the first film I’d seen by director Luchino Visconti, I observed, and a damn fine introduction; enough so that in the months since then, I’ve become quite the little […]
And now I must admit that I really have absolutely nothing to say. The third feature made by director John Carpenter, 1978’s Halloween has been pulled apart and analysed from every conceivable angle in the 30 years since it set the record as the most profitable film in history ($47 million on a $320,000 budget, […]
The party line on Tony Richardson’s 1963 adaptation of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones is that it is a period film done up in the style of the French New Wave, which is a little bit accurate and a whole lot reductive. It’s an easy point to forget that there were many styles of filmmaking in […]
The final shots of the Michael Bay-produced remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre set up a sequel in the baldest way possible, and also one of the stupidest: relying as it does on a character who very prominently lost his arms suddenly being able to jump out of the dark with a chainsaw. Yet somehow, […]
In 1949, four years before Ian Fleming created James Bond, French novelist Jean Bruce gave the world his own version of the suave, womanising super-spy, in the form of Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, codename OSS 117. Some seven or eight years later (sources disagree), Bonisseur was given his own film series beginning with OSS […]
To give credit where it is due, I am more than a little delighted that Hancock, the new reshoot-blighted Will Smith superhero vehicle, has brought back that old-fashioned high concept summer movie like we used to get all the time in the ’80s and ’90s. Nowadays, “summer popcorn movie” is just another way of saying […]
The work of Candian filmmaker Guy Maddin falls squarely into love-it or hate-it territory, although “hate-it” might be too strong; “find it humourlessly indulgent” is probably better. Anyway, I love it, and I’m not going to try to mount a defense of the director, because I think so much of what makes his films work […]
Nine years ago, in the cinematic annus mirabilis of 1999, two of the movies that did the most to get the hearts and minds of the American male adolescent pumping were Fight Club and The Matrix, the first a fable about the restoration of Western masculinity, the second a thing, with the bullet-time (and there […]
