The obvious thing is to talk about Blade Runner as though it were nothing but an exercise in style for style’s sake on the part of director Ridley Scott; and while we prefer to do what is not obvious here, even when it means making the sort of contortions of logic and expression that really are just not worth it, sometimes you have to genuflect, humbly, in the direction of […]
Star Wars is typically held to have ruined American movies, by turning Hollywood’s eye away from the narratively and structurally complex, character-driven films that dominated the 1970s, in favor of big, loud, effects-driven epics that all start to look a whole lot like one another once you’ve seen enough of them. And when you put it that way, sure, it seems pretty damn awful. But there’s a good side to […]
Honestly, doesn’t it kind of feel like this whole summer is just going to be on protracted anticlimax? Not necessarily in terms of quality – I’m tempted to say, probably not in terms of quality – June and July always looked better than May to me – but there simply isn’t going to be another Avengers, not in terms of box office and not in terms of how much it […]
One of the most fun things to do is to bitch about how consistently wrong the Oscars have been throughout their history; but in the interest of being positive and loving to all things in the world, I thought I’d take the exact opposite tack of spending some time exploring the places where the Academy did well, even really well. The places, in fact, where the Academy gave out an […]
The onscreen title of Battle: Los Angeles lacks the colon. It is indisputably the case that this fact bothers me more than it possibly should. But it just doesn’t look right. Specifically, it makes the title look more like an imperative rather than a description, and I also can’t help feeling it would be better with an exclamation point. Battle Los Angeles! But, really, I shouldn’t get this annoyed by […]
The complete list Introduction #1-5 #6-15 #16-25 #26-35 #36-45 #46-55 #56-65 #66-75 #76-85 #86-95 #96-105 #106-115 Notable omissions 95. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933, USA) Though they’re arguably the most iconic figures in sound comedy, it’s acknowledged that the bulk of the Marx Brothers’ films aren’t terribly “good”: pockmarked by uninspired filmmaking and reedy subplots. This rarely matters, since the sheer industrial-strength potency of their humor outweighs everything; still, it’s […]
Every Sunday this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: not the first nor the last movie to beat Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood to the punch, but almost certainly the best. Of the many cinematic retellings of the legend of Britain’s most famous outlaw, […]
Like it or not, along comes another cinematic adaptation of the oft-told tale of Robin Hood: the weary middle-aged archer who returns from the doomed Third Crusade looking only to lie his way into anonymity with some gold he stole from the bier carrying the crown of dead king Richard I, but finds himself instead helping the petulant new King John and the rebellious northern barons make peace long enough […]
And so we come to the start of another summer movie season! A peculiarly modest one too, if I don’t miss my guess; doesn’t it seem like there are fewer big tentpole movies that everyone is chattering about than most years? Is it just me? Of course, part of the problem is that one of the likeliest blockbusters of the season is from that fucking vampire franchise, but it’s a […]
Author’s note: I no longer stand behind this ranking – though I still dislike all of these films – but I leave this as it stood in 2010, for the interest of history A sequel to last week’s list, because despite a ceremony where nothing truly objectionable took place (if nothing else, the Up in the Air shut-out kind of made my night), it’s still fun and delightful to hold […]
James Cameron’s rise to the top was swift: it was only his third film, and the second that anyone ever gave a damn about, that saw him win the coveted credit, “A James Cameron Film”. Of course, being the director of something as outstanding as The Terminator would do that for a fella’s reputation. Mind you, this was all entirely deserved: because 1986’s Aliens was indeed “A James Cameron Film”, […]
Piranha II: The Spawning may have been a wretched, cheap monster picture, but it had one benefit for the young first-time director James Cameron: it put his name out there, and got him in a position that any young filmmaker would have committed some of the most wicked sins to achieve, namely, he found himself simultaneously writing two major Hollywood sequels, a far cry from the scrungy Italian industry where […]
