Bias time: I was barely prepared to like John Wick at all, and the possibility of loving it seemed so laughably remote that it hadn’t even occurred to me. And yet here we are, and I kind of loved John Wick. It’s a silly world. On paper, the film is generic as generic gets: John […]
Feature-length toy commercials may not get much more crass than Ouija: “You can buy one of these at your local toy store”, one character literally snorts at one point, and that’s after the infomercial-like exchange during which two other characters speculate about how nice it would be if there were some sort of… anything… that […]
The post title says it all, really. Ron Howard is an important Hollywood director, and I felt that I had to include him; but there was no reason I could come up with for any individual title in his filmography. 1989 had no other compelling contenders, plus I had never seen the director’s film Parenthood […]
36 years after Daiei Film wrapped up its loose trilogy of yokai-themed spooky-but-not-quite-horror films for children, Kadokawa Pictures elected to resurrected the franchise – Kadokawa being the place where the disintegrating remains of Daiei ended up around the beginning of the 2000s. And naturally enough, given the desire to whip up a new children’s movie, […]
Speaking entirely personally, you understand, I’d be quick to identify the 1980s as the worst decade in the history of American filmmaking (though I recognise the strong argument in favor of giving that title to the 1960s, and frankly, the 2010s aren’t heading in a very promising direction). It was a formulaic, money-driven, recklessly safe […]
There was not ever going to be a good reason to tell the secret tragic backstory of how Count Dracula, one of English culture’s all-time best unrelentingly wicked bad guys, was actually motivated by love of his family and country. Let’s be totally clear about that part. Secret tragic backstories for the Wicked Witch of […]
The gap between American cinema in the 1970s and in the 1980s, as much as anything, is the gap between little and big movies. The ’80s did not invent “big” cinema, of course, but the post-Star Wars ecosystem loved high concepts and sprawling productions a whole hell of a lot, and this love began infecting […]
The moment when you start to voice the old “I can’t believe they left that part of of the book out of the movie! That was the best part!” complaint, and the movie about which you are complaining is Left Behind, that’s when you discover that you need to take a nice long break from […]
Screens at CIFF: 10/10 & 10/12 World premiere: 18 May, 2014, Cannes International Film Festival There’s an entirely great film living solely within the footage that makes up the complete Force Majeure, and plenty of people would apparently argue that the great film is the final cut. Hence the film’s victory in the Un Certain […]
War is violent. Did you know? Was this something that you might have guessed at, even in your most wild fantasies? Because the new World War II movie Fury seems to have run out of ideas above and beyond “war is violent”, though it makes up for that by suggesting that war was really really […]
The business of being a fan of horror movies is a frustrating and thankless one, since they are so especially prone to being bad, but ever so often one comes along that you can stand up and cheer and point at and say “that one. That is what I have been waiting for”. And oh […]
Screens at CIFF: 10/11 & 10/12 & 10/22World premiere: 5 September, 2014, Venice International Film Festival If you like your stories of life in Islamic ex-Soviet states to be full of long takes with very little dialogue, a very literal concept of the link between the landscape and the people inhabiting it, and proud women […]
