Sequels are always an artistically dubious risk, horror sequels not least of all. It’s still hard to process just how much worse 1955’s Revenge of the Creature is than its remarkable predecessor. Creature from the Black Lagoon is, if nothing else, one of the truly great B-horror pictures of the 1950s, and with both producer […]
A third review requested by Sara L, with thanks for contributing three times to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I expect that some of my loyal readers will be surprised to learn that it is only now, in the year 2016, that I’ve finally seen The Ring. There are reasons for this: […]
The iconic, literally genre-defining run of horror films produced by Universal Pictures in the almost 15 years between 1931’s Dracula and 1945’s House of Dracula was largely founded on five pillars: the vampire Count Dracula, the hideous animated corpse created by the mad Dr. Frankenstein, a self-loathing Welsh werewolf, the ancient Egyptian mummies Imhotep and […]
Portait of a Garden is the first film directed by Rosie Stapel, whose film career to date has been entirely in art direction and production design. This is absolutely not a trivial fact. The film, which has been sneaking around quietly for almost two years on the festival circuit, and is currently enjoying a wisp […]
When all else fails, every Werner Herzog documentary has at least this going for it: they make for a fascinating glimpse into the things that Werner Herzog finds interesting, and he’s nothing if not an interesting man himself. This is probably the best argument I can make in favor of all 104 minutes of the […]
Thanks to Travis Neeley for his second contribution to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. This time around, Travis didn’t exactly make a request, so much as offer me a present: he wanted me to select a movie that I’d already reviewed but had changed my mind about in the intervening years, and […]
A second review requested by Chris D, with thanks for contributing twice to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. First, shame on me. I’ve known for years that seeing Battle Royale was a thing I certainly ought to do, and I’ve had access to it for a number of those years, even during […]
At some point, I imagine it will get old to keep watching sardonic dark satires about life in the Communist days made in the countries that used to be part of the Soviet Bloc; they’ve been all but a cliché on the film festival circuit for as long as I’ve been going to film festivals. […]
Moonlight is one kind of thing I do not like much at all: a coming-of-age story involving the protagonist’s sexual awakening (it is, to be fair, an excellent one; but it’s my least-favorite genre in narrative art. Consider my bias fully disclosed). It is also one thing I like very much: a structural experiment, in […]
A second review requested by Jackie Theballcat, with thanks for contributing twice to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I would fear that nothing can be left to say about The Room, but then, is not The Room inexhaustible? I’ve seen it multiple in times in a number of wildly different contexts, and […]
Let nobody say that Woody Allen is really as redundant and uninspired as all that. After 46 feature films spanning 50 years, the director’s Café Society finally catches him doing something brand new: for the first time, he’s made a film in color that is a genuine triumph of cinematography, as opposed to just reasonably […]
The Romanian New Wave that stormed into international prominence with The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu in 2005, 12:08 East of Bucharest in 2006, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in 2007 is still with us, though I think it’s fair to say that it lacks the sparkle of the new. Some while ago, […]
