Any historical film movement is usually going to get discussed in terms of the biggest name-brand directors responsible for the biggest name-brand films, and so it was with the Soviet Montage movement. Any cinephile worthy of the name will know Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov at least by name, and anyone who likes their work […]
I don’t quite know how the career of Frederick Wiseman works – why 2015’s In Jackson Heights seemed to rate such a tiny speck of a release, and now his follow-up, Ex Libris – The New York Public Library is getting substantially more exposure. At least, more exposure by Frederick Wiseman standards, which is to […]
I am no expert in the history of silent Soviet cinema, merely an enthusiastic hobbyist, but I think I’m still comfortable saying that the two most important, well-regarded filmmakers in the USSR in 1927 were Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin. So it makes sense that those two men were tapped by the Central Committee to […]
“Man, I loved the hell out of Dogtooth. I wish Yorgos Lanthimos would make another movie that made me feel as elaborately horrible as Dogtooth” is not by any means the kind of statement that everybody could or should agree with, but it’s a strongly-held belief of your humble author. And as much as I […]
So, with Thor: Ragnarok, we finally have a film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe directed by a no-two-ways-about-it Great Director. And that’s a subjective enough claim, of course; we do after all live in a world where people will earnestly defend Kenneth Branagh, who helmed the first Thor an unfathomably long six and a half […]
A review requested by Andrew Johnson, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! It is, in principle, the job of the movie critic to be objective, or at least to […]
There is simply no reason at all to have brought the Saw franchise back to life after all these happy, wonderful years, but things happen without reason all the time. And anyway, there was a reason: brand recognition. So here we are, seven Halloweens after the release of the film first released as Saw 3D […]
There was a time once, and not so very long ago either, when a chainsaw-wielding psychopath in a Madea film would have been Madea herself, as was so memorably, dispiritingly seen in the character’s very first big-screen appearance, 2005’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman. But times change, and with Boo 2! A Madea Halloween, […]
