Considering how much its visceral, rubbery gore effects, electronic score, the niceties of its lighting and film stock, and especially its position in the center of a maelstrom of controversy about these goddamn violence-driven horror pictures with no characterisations beyond “this guy dies then that guy dies” all mark it out as a quintessential product […]
It would be nice if more remakes found some way to justify themselves beyond “because of the money” – it would be nice, in fact, if more movies generally did the same – and this goes doubly for films that are basically flawless. Which is a phrase I feel super uncomfortable in applying to 1980’s […]
The transformation of Hammer Films into the world’s most prominent home for edgy, brutal, sexy genre films was completed almost entirely on the backs of 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein and 1958’s Dracula, released in America as Horror of Dracula (the fuse was, however, lit by the violent sci-fi/horror film The Quatermass Xperiment). And as […]
To begin with, let us first point out that One Million Years B.C., Hammer’s 1966 contribution to the caveman genre, rests its success on two qualities that are impossible for a 12-year-old boy to resist: some of the very best dinosaurs found anywhere in cinema before Jurassic Park came along with its CGI creations, and […]
We all know by now that 21 Jump Street is actually, like, startlingly good, right? That, even though it looks hokey and dumb, it turns that dumbness to its advantage, makes a tool of it, et cetera. Well, if you managed to avoid hearing all that, you know it now: the movie is sort of […]
The easy part first: the David Fincher-directed and Steve Zaillian-scripted The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is better across the board than 2009’s Män som hatar kvinnor, the Swedish adaptation of the same source novel by the late Stieg Larsson. The sole exception is the key role of that very same tattooed girl, where it’s […]
There might not be any 20th Century novelist as well-served by dramatic adaptations of his works as British spy author (and former British spy) John le Carré: the not-as-great films taken from his body of work feature such wholly enjoyable thinking-heavy thrillers as The Russia House and The Tailor of Panama, while the great ones […]
Pennies from Heaven was a ridiculous flop upon its initial release in the winter of 1981-’82, grossing considerably less than half of its $22 million budget back at a time when that was real money, and honestly, it makes a lot of sense that it would. It was a musical at a time when virtually […]
There was a TV movie made in 1973, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, that is frequently cited by those who’ve seen it, as one of the best made-for-TV movies of that era, one of the two Golden Ages of made-for-TV movies (the other is the early ’50s). I haven’t seen nearly enough of the […]
In 1961, Sergio Leone cast an actor from an American TV Western in one of his movies. The actor was Rory Calhoun, and the movie was The Colossus of Rhodes. In 1964, he again cast an actor from an American TV Western in one of his movies. The actor was Clint Eastwood, and the movie […]
August is traditionally (tradition = since around the late 1990s) meant to be the winding-down part of the summer, when the films that aren’t really meant to be good are released; what that has actually meant for three years running is that the August releases tend to be the slightly more personal and idiosyncratic ones […]
Upon reflection, I’m a bit surprised it took this long for Jason Statham to star in a Charles Bronson remake. They fill the same niche in the Action Movie Star ecosystem: perpetually pissed-off tough guy who looks kind of scary no matter what he’s doing, and kills people with more a sense of brutality than […]
