The Wizard of Oz is a film that everybody has watched, nearly everybody has loved, and perhaps as a direct consequence, it’s a film that nobody, I think has really seen. Certainly I hadn’t; it’s surely one of the five movies I’ve watched the most times,* but I’d never given all that much thought to […]
Making the inevitable sequel to Sleepaway Camp turned out to be a rather acrimonious and challenging affair, involving original writer-director Robert Hiltzik being cut out of his own creation, with his somewhat more expansive vision for the series being turned into a pair of direct-to-video cheapies filmed in one burst of production and released in […]
After the befuddlement and irritation that greeted The Portrait of a Lady and Holy Smoke, 2003 saw Jane Campion receiving her worst reviews yet for In the Cut, a serial killer thriller adapted from the 1995 novel by Susanna Moore, who co-wrote the screenplay with Campion. The plot was too contrived and confused, we were […]
Inglourious Basterds is a marvel, at least. Like it or hate it or worship it, I’m pretty sure that you’ve never seen anything like it. I know, because I have seen many films just like it, and I still haven’t seen anything like it. But that’s what makes Quentin Tarantino the man he is: there’s […]
When I dove headlong into the films of Jane Campion just a few weeks ago (a few weeks! surely it’s been longer than that?), I knew very little about what was going to happen to me. One of the few things I did know was that her two most recent films were generally, perhaps even […]
The slasher boom is noted above all else for its abiding unoriginality; the vast number of films that copy the details of Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th, Part 2 is really quite incredible. A pre-title sequence that introduces a murderous threat; a thirty-minute first act that introduces a battalion of horny teenagers, ripe […]
After completing The Piano, Jane Campion was at what you might call a bit of a crossroads. The story goes that she’d been wanting to make that film for virtually her entire career; and it took her hardly any time to earn the clout to make it just the way she wanted. The result was […]
Brainy sci-fi thrillers are always a treat, especially in a summer like this one, where the popcorn tentpole movies have for the most part been fairly uninspiring duds. So let’s be thankful for Neill Blomkamp’s remarkably assured feature debut, District 9, which although hardly flawless, rips along at a devilish pace unheard of, to my […]
Last week, I said of An Angel at My Table, it was “a brilliant work by a woman who was by now in full command of her powers.” Ha ha! How very young and naïve I was last week! I mean, I still think An Angel at My Table is a pretty moving, powerful motion […]
I’m not inclined to recommend movies on fuzzy humanist grounds, but The Beaches of Agnès is the kind of film that will make you feel better about cinema, humanity, and life itself. It’s been years since anything has come out with the same messy vitality of this memoir-documentary, and if you are able to walk […]
From among the Video Nasties 1981’s The Burning holds the distinction of being one of the very first films on the UK’s Video Nasties list; but I am not reviewing it because of its notoriety. Nor is it here for its quality, although it’s one of the absolute best slasher movies that I’ve ever seen, […]
It appears that responses to Julie & Julia come in two basic styles: -The Meryl Streep half of the movie is fantastic, and the Amy Adams half is breezy enough that the whole counts as a successful entertainment, without anything that’s going to make you regret the price of a ticket. -The Meryl Streep half […]
