That the Insidious franchise would gravely soldier on even after the fucking awful Insidious: Chapter 2 was already a bad sign. That it would do so in the form of a prequel was an even worse sign, and that this prequel would defy basic rules of numerical order to call itself Insidious: Chapter 3 was […]
The big surprise of the new action-comedy Spy is how much of an action-comedy it actually is, as opposed to a comedy that’s got some dog-ends of action in it. For a film directed by Paul Feig and starring Melissa McCarthy – a partnership that has resulted in Bridesmaids and the much more overtly comic […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: bro, they made an Entourage movie. Time to spend a little time looking back through the annals of lifestyle […]
Horror, in its broadest construction, has always been something of a faddish genre. There have been comedies and character dramas for as long as there have been movies, and depending on where you want to set the margins around “action movie”, they’ve existed in some for or another for nearly as long. Horror, though, has […]
A review requested by Nathaniel R, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. And happy birthday, Nathaniel! The primary characteristic of Love with the Proper Stranger, in defiance of its handsomely poetic title, is that it is fucking blunt. That is the first thing it wants us to be […]
The most reductive version of the Entire History of American Horror Filmmaking is that it all began as Hollywood’s narrative and stylistic response to German Expressionism, which was, with the odd exception here or there, the only place you could go between about 1910 and 1930 to find anything paranormal in the movies. And this […]
A second review requested by Brian Malbon, with thanks for contributing twice to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Concision is nice and all, but it’s hard not to be jealous that in 2001, those of us in the English-speaking world got a movie with the blunt, sensible title Amélie, while in France, […]
Watching 1935’s Werewolf of London 80 years later is taking a peek into a history that never was. The first feature-length werewolf movie in English (and probably the first in all of sound cinema, though it does well to be a bit cagey with absolute pronouncements on the history of genre films) was one of […]
San Andreas, a by-the-books disaster movie in which Dwayne Johnson fights an earthquake, is exactly the movie you suppose it to be, except in one, absolutely crucial regard: it’s weirdly allergic to fun. By which I guess I mean that “by-the-books disaster movie” suggests one particular register of sobriety and anguished emotions, where as “Dwayne […]
A review requested by Jordyn Auvil, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. The big problem with The English Patient isn’t even its fault: the problem is that Elaine Benes fucking hated it, and nobody who saw that 1997 episode of the sitcom Seinfeld before they caught up with […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: we all know that San Andreas brings back the noble and intensely cliché-happy formula of the all-American disaster picture. […]
