There is no doubt in my mind that the most interesting development in cinema right now is the curious explosion of first-person camcorder movies (somebody needs to come up a name for the style soon, but not me). It seems highly unlikely that any of the three films so far made with this aesthetic – Brian De Palma’s Redacted, the J.J. Abrams-produced Cloverfield and now, horror grand master George A. […]
Whatever else is true of Cloverfield, I must give J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves credit for making one of the few films to use 9/11 imagery in an effective and appropriate way. It is entirely possible that the last time I saw a film that played a similar card without coming across as exploitive or crude was also a genre film, Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds back in 2005. […]
Just like that, we snap back to the beginning of the year, and the monstrous, wintry wasteland of Dumping Season. Ordinarily, this is the month were all the parts of the country that aren’t New York and Los Angeles get all of the big December Oscabait, but so very few films were given a platform release that even that cold comfort will be absent. Nor does it seem that there […]
Whether 2007 was a great year for filmgoing or not, it was a terrible year for cinephilia: months later, the deaths of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni still loom over every movie with aspirations to higher art. Not to mention the ridiculous Bergman Wars that erupted all over the internet as to whether or not he was a worthwhile filmmaker, all because Jonathan Rosenbaum didn’t like him and wrote a […]
Whether or not he or she admits to it, deep inside every film buff is the desire to watch a certain number of films in a given year. Perhaps most people don’t do what I do, and set that number as their New Year’s resolution, but most people are not so wankeriffic as I am. Yesterday, I reached a total of 183 distinct films watched in 2006, which is to […]
Philip Seymour Hoffman is a great actor, and here’s the proof: Mission: Impossible III is an interesting movie when he’s onscreen. Hoffman plays Owen Davian, who is evil. Davian wants to take control of the “Rabbit’s Foot” a MacGuffin of biohazardous origin. Standing in his way is Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise, the media darling of the modern age. It seems clear that the underwhelming box of returns for […]
What was that about? 5.5.2006A horror movie with a simply goofy trailer, An American Haunting has a good cast that it looks to waste entirely. Why, Donald Sutherland? Why, Sissy Spacek? Also up is the newest Carl Hiaasen adaption (from one of his kids’ books), Hoot – never read it, but I think I’d rather, especially given Hiaasen’s adaptation track record. A new film from Chen Kaige, The Promise, which […]
There’s been a lot of speculation by fans of a certain scene in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker where Finn desperately tries to tell Rey something before he [SPOILERS!] thinks he’s doing to die sinking into some kind of quicksand. But we never actually find out what he intended to tell her. I found out exactly what Finn wanted to tell Rey… In the scene where Rey, Finn, Poe, […]
