A guide to this blog’s James Bond marathon can be found right here. DIE ANOTHER DAYDirected by Lee TamahoriWritten by Neal Purvis & Robert WadePremiered 18 November, 2002 PRE-TITLE SEQUENCEAfter the operatic, 14+ minute opening to The World Is Not Enough, there was apparently some pressure to make the next one just as grand and […]
As we have pointed out in this space already, thanks to the massive success of his Cat People, producer Val Lewton had a reasonably free hand to make movies the way he wanted in his RKO horror unit, with the major exception of titles: he was given titles and had to make a movie that […]
Screens at CIFF: 10/12 & 10/14Winner of the Gold Hugo for Best FilmWinner of the Silver Hugo for Best ActorWinner of the Silver Hugo for Best CinematographyWorld premiere: 23 May, 2012, Cannes Film Festival Several days later, I’m still not certain that I’ve gotten my head all the way around Holy Motors, the fifth feature […]
A guide to all things Bond at Alternate Ending. Directed by Michael Apted Written by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and Bruce Feirstein, from a story by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade Premiered 8 November, 1999 As one of the few Bond movies with a significant enough twist that it can actually be spoiled, I […]
Convention tells us that The Seventh Victim, the third of four films produced by Val Lewton’s B-picture unit at RKO in their peak year of 1943, is a horror film; but even by the standards that Lewton had already established, whereby “horror” gets tweaked in some thoroughly unexpected and unrecognisable way, this one doesn’t look […]
Screens at CIFF: 10/18 & 10/20World premiere: 9 August, 2012, Locarno International Film Festival One finds that Leviathan is commonly described as a documentary, which is almost certainly for the reason that there’s not anywhere else to put it. And it does, in its fashion, document: the cameras (tiny, unobtrusive digital jobs) are set up […]
No cheaper shot can be taken than to point out that Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (or however they’re styling the title), adapted from the most important book by a woman for whom the Absolute Rightness of the free market and the indescribable evil of welfare were the immutable foundations of her philosophy, exists solely […]
Screens at CIFF: 10/19 & 10/20World premiere: 23 January, 2012, Sundance Film Festival Stanley Kubrick was an obsessive, precise director, brought up from the world of still photography and thus prone to filling each and every frame in his movies with exactingly specific detail. This is beyond doubt. In the modern world, we have a […]
Screens at CIFF: 10/19 & 10/20 Winner of the Gold Hugo in the After Dark Competition World premiere: 19 May, 2012, Cannes Film Festival Speaking completely privately, you understand, but if my father was a remarkably famous film director; and if my remarkably famous father was moreover famous primarily for one very specific and relatively […]
Officially speaking, Sinister shares only a couple of producers with Insidious, but their bond goes much deeper than that. Fairly uniquely among contemporary horror films, they are both straight-up ghost stories of a very old-fashioned “sit around trying to freak out the other kids by piling on details one after the other” variety, which manifests […]
Screens at CIFF: 10/18 & 10/20 & 10/22World premiere: 14 June, 2012, Israel If you have ever heard of the Israeli comedy trio Gashash, you’re one up on me, both as a student of important cultural touchstones throughout the world, and as concerns Shemi Zarhin’s hugely successful film The World Is Funny – recipient of […]
Screens at CIFF: 10/18 & 10/20 & 10/23 WORLD THEATRICAL PREMIERE (previously available on Amazon Instant) Did the very title of Fuckload of Scotchtape induce me to watch the film above and beyond any consideration of plot, genre, or style? Dear reader, hear my confession: it did. That title – styled FLOST for easy of […]
