The current printing of the DVD box calls it Jaws 3, while the onscreen title of the same is Jaws III. Ignore these lies! They are only feeble attempts to hide a secret shame, for make no mistake, the title of the thing is Jaws 3-D. For it came during the enthusiastic flurry of 3-D […]

It is often suggested that the Jaws franchise represents the steepest decline in quality between the first/best and last/worst entries in a given series anywhere in cinema history. This is almost certainly the case, but to tell the truth, the bulk of that drop was done right away – it might, in fact, also stand […]

For some time now, I’ve had people raising the question, “When are you going to review Jaws?” because as we are all aware, there are not nearly enough reviews of Jaws in this world. That said, I am not immune to begging, and when the slowest week for new releases in several months stumbled into […]

If the stupid people are right and 2012 ends up being the last year of human existence, it could hardly have gotten off to a more appropriate start than The Devil Inside, which suggests at least this much: the race for Worst Film of the Year is going to be extremely competitive. Here is how […]

The word of the day, boys and girls, is “ambivalent”. As in, “I feel extremely ambivalent towards Bellflower, because Bellfower is extremely ambivalent about its two main characters.” Not in the good way.* One gets the feeling – anyway, I got the feeling, and it does seem that Bellflower is something of a Rosarch test […]

Hobo with a Shotgun is deliberately meant to be a bad movie. The reason that I know this is that the film is incredibly eager to remind me over and over again, of this fact. And that is why I’m almost tempted to say that it’s bad. I mean, it is bad, but it’s not […]

The first important thing about Putty Hill is that it is, as they like to call it, bravura filmmaking. Matthew Porterfield’s second feature is a plotless chamber drama that does everything in its power to convince you that it’s a documentary, except that it doesn’t actually want you to think it’s a documentary at all, […]

As the most prolific filmmaker currently living, Miike Takashi has probably done just about everything a director can do at least once, making statements about his authorial personality almost totally meaningless. This is not enough to shame me out of making just such a statement, which is that one of the things Miike does an […]

Welcome, friends, to the Year of Blood! For the next twelve months, we’ll be exploring the world of horror films with that special seasonal flair: a mere sampling of the many, many films that take place on a holiday or other special event. Happy New Year, everybody, and here’s to a fun, death-filled 2012! The […]