I’m not sure that Motel Hell “works”, but just on sheer chutzpah, it’s got to be one of the most wholly worthwhile American horror films of the early 1980s. Simply nobody was doing this kind of thing in 1980, the year the film was released as part of the first wave of slasher movies, in […]
A War is not two films dwelling one films’ body, not exactly. It is one very sleekly unified film divided into two obviously distinct phases, and you can identify the exact frame where the second one starts. And that wouldn’t really be worth leaning on that, except that the first phase is a very well-made […]
A review requested by Christopher Pufall, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Slightly more than a quarter of a century since it premiered (and slightly less than a quarter of a century since the first and only time I’ve seen it prior to now), I’m honestly shocked by […]
I think the Purge series has found its level. After 2014’s The Purge: Anarchy represented such a gigantic leap in quality over The Purge from the prior year, I had been willing to drift into some kind of small optimism that the second sequel might be another step up – undoubtedly a less dramatic one. […]
A review requested by Aaron Loehrlein, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I first saw the 1996 film Trainspotting in 2001, as a 19-year-old film school undergraduate, which is exactly the right place, stage of life, and point in history to have first seen it, and I will […]
Roald Dahl’s 1982 children’s book The BFG is possibly the gentlest thing he ever wrote, with his characteristic dark humor and fantastic violence flickering on the margins but mostly left away from the plot. Even so, director Steven Spielberg and production company Walt Disney Pictures have endeavored to make it gentler still in their new […]
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: Disney and Steven Spielberg combine forces to make The BFG, based upon a novel by a children’s novelist with […]
A summer at Antagony & Ecstasy without ANY 1980s horror movies is no summer at all. So every weekend in July, I’m looking at a grab-bag of some of the more notable titles released in and around the great slasher boom of 1980-1984. It’s cheap to rag on a movie for not holding fast to […]
A second review requested by Andrew Milne, with thanks for contributing twice to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. It is, for me, an article of faith: the key to making a great parody is, above all things, love. One does not effectively parody even the lowliest form through mockery: it takes an […]
Dedicated to Hollywood icon Olivia de Havilland on her 100th birthday Speaking honestly, The Snake Pit, released in 1948, is kind of a bad movie. It’s a thick slab of 20th Century Fox Post-War Message Movie, and if it remains more watchable than the previous year’s Gentleman’s Agreement, that’s only because every movie in history […]
I could easily fall into the trap of overvaluing The Shallows, but by the same token, it would be a real shame to fall into the even bigger trap of overlooking how really, truly wonderful it is as a short, snappy thriller. This is the exact opposite of all the things the phrase “summer movie” […]
A second review requested by Kent H, with thanks for contributing twice to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. For a while there at the start of his career, John Carpenter was making some truly admirable choices. After directing the most profitable movie in history in the form of 1978’s ur-slasher Halloween, he […]
