The key ingredient in a cinematic epic, is weight. In a true massive epic, the likes of Laurence of Arabia, The Lord of the Rings, Malcolm X, The Longest Day, we have to feel that the events are witnessing are of great importance, with implications that will have massive ramifications for generations. An attempted that either undersells the importance and feels false, (Midway) or oversells it (Exodus: Gods and Kings) and feels silly, will not succeed.
Denis Villeneuve and his…
The Thing is John Carpenter's Masterpiece. He has other movies that are scarier, cooler or smarter, but The Thing is his magnum opus. This is a movie that John Carpenter made that nobody else could've. His vision is pure and visceral and utterly bleak. Every shot, every scene is orchestrated for maximum impact. Even people without any love for horror get sucked into his apocalyptic vision. It's brilliant and despite many attempts, nobody else has come close to replicating the feel of this film.
Oh, okay, so THAT's a Gaspar Noé film. Pretty fucked and pretty fucking cool. The hype is real. How often do I watch a movie and say I've literally never seen anything directed like that before. Pretty goddamn rarely. Scorsese talks a lot about "Film Grammar", and Noé is doing things with form and structure I can't say I've seen anything quite like. Shifting between rapid cut to black static wides and out of control long steadicam (handheld? I have…
Everyone's always like "When will Rob Zombie make a Texas Chainsaw film" and well, this is pretty much it. Depiction of Leatherface's childhood in a mental institution, hillbillies murdering their way across the country side, violent angry cops played by talented character actors, unnecessary sexual assault and necrophilia scenes, it's all very Rob Zombie. The only thing missing is Sheri Moon. I wonder if she'd play the rabidly sexual shotgun carrying necrophiliac mental patient or the mom who encourages Leatherface…
Lean and mean, this killing machine delivers all the holiday themed gore you could ask for. I'm not much of an Eli Roth aficionado, but I'm glad to say that I enjoyed his take on the holiday slasher. Thanksgiving leans hard into the gore and also has some pretty wicked jokes, but overall the tone leans towards fun. It's not actively scary but the kill scenes are decently suspenseful. There's some pretty gruesome material here, and I wouldn't suggest it…
I could watch a new mid-budget thriller like this every week. Nobody does it as reliably as Soderbergh. Oceans, Contagion, Logan Lucky, No Sudden Move, the man regularly aces thrillers. His style is so distinct as director, cinematographer and editor, his movies just flow so smoothly it’s incredible.
Black Bag is a tight 90, a conversational spy thriller in the style of Le Carre. It’s a movie mostly about interrogations, almost none of which are carried out in an interrogation…
