It’s not enough to claim, as I was almost content to do, that The Peanuts Movie shows up as a very good example of how to do modernisation right. Upgrading Charles Schulz’s achingly melancholic comic strip that ran from 1950 to 2000, and the considerably less melancholic but sometimes nearly as iconic TV specials that […]
It cannot be pointed out too many times that many of the things we think of as the peculiar sins of contemporary cinema are in some ways as old as the medium itself. This is never clearer – and never more important to reiterate, since this is perhaps the most peculiar sin of them all […]
A third review requested by Andrew Johnson, with thanks for contributing yet again to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Personal anecdotes aren’t criticism, of course, but in this case the anecdote shall lead us to criticism, I promise. The thing is, when I was a wee cinephile, I was quite addicted to […]
A review requested by Rachel P, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. The broadly-defined genre of Prestige Picture Adaptations of Unassailable Literary Classics is terrifically old and terrifically durable, though it has had specific high and low points over the years. The most recent high, in the English-speaking […]
The 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera is two things. One of these is the best of the small population of pure horror films made in the United States during the silent era. The other is a thorny mess to talk about, so we need to have some history. The short version of […]
To begin with, define “horror” in a way that makes everybody happy; then solve the intractable mysteries of cinema history prior to 1920. And once you have done these two things, you can authoritatively state, “this is the first American horror film”. But until we reach that point of pure intellectual fulfillment, the best we […]
A review requested by Branden, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Writer-director Wim Wenders’s The American Friend is, arguably, not a very good adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game at all: it backs off on the thriller elements considerably, alters the tone, jettisons important plot details and changes […]
A review requested by Andrew Yankes, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Here’s something of a paradox: David Mamet doesn’t know shit about directing films, if we’re to judge from his 1991 book On Directing Films (as pristine an example I can name of the bizarre fixation that […]
A review requested by Travis Neeley, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. By 1974, Brian De Palma had seven features under his belt, with the seventh, 1973’s Sisters, having kicked off his legendary run of Hitchcock riffs. So we cannot possibly call Phantom of the Paradise, the director’s […]
A review requested by Bryan L, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. To begin with, we have here a biopic – and does any genre so reliably connote “this is a well-polished and achingly handsome lump of Serious Art that’s not terribly artistic and even less entertaining” than […]
Talking about Predestination without confidently, fearlessly giving away plot points that shouldn’t be given away is enormously hard. The best thing would be to go in totally cold, not even knowing what short story it’s based on (having read the story – it is not at all obscure, though calling it “well-known” might be a […]
The word that primarily suggests itself in respect to Paddington, roughly muscling out all other possibilities, is “charming”. A word which could certainly be employed with a certain level of condescension, sure, but not really in this case. For it is an earned charm, in Paddington; the screenplay by director Paul King, from a story […]
