Hands down October is my favorite month of the year. The reasons are simple: the weather gets cooler, but not too cold to bear, and there’s Halloween, which means I have a reason to indulge in one of life’s great pleasures: scary movies. October 1st, I started what I plan to be an all month […]
Truffaut once said of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes that whenever he sat down to try to examine the mechanics of the film, he’d become too engrossed in the plot to notice them. I’m not sure what his exact quote was, since I can’t be bothered to look it up. But I bring it up here to say that […]
Until I sat down to watch Joel and Ethan Coen’s Raising Arizona last Saturday night, I hadn’t seen the film since I was a kid. I remember it being on HBO during my youth. I’m not sure how old I was, but I remember my dad laughing at some of the jokes. Some of the […]
Blood Simple begins with a shot of the Texas landscape and a voiceover. “Now, in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else. That’s the theory anyway. But what I know about is Texas, and down here you’re on your own.” Simple is right, if you’re going by plot. A married […]
The first time I saw Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, I recognized it was a beautiful film. One only need to watch Chihiro crossing the creek and see the stream, the way it ripples and moves to understand Miyazaki’s great attention to detail. The visual splendor of Miyazaki’s work has been well-covered. What I didn’t realize until I […]
Managing expectations can play an important part in the extent to which I enjoy a movie, especially a mediocre one, and make no mistake, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice falls into that category. Everything that has been said about its unnecessarily long run-time and overly convoluted plot is on point. I didn’t seek out reviews […]
Bret Easton Ellis recently tweeted that Art House Horror was quickly become his least favorite genre. As a horror fan, I see his point. There has been a lot of good stuff in recent years in this particular niche. Ti West’s The Innkeepers and House of the Devil were stand outs. Let the Right One In […]
Lately I’ve been making my way through The Great Movies reviewed on Roger Ebert’s website. Sometimes I’ll watch and then read his review, but I prefer to read his review and then watch to see whether I agree with his assessments. So far I’ve watched (or re-watched) the first five on the list (which were really the last five […]
“It’s one of the worst tendencies of human nature to assume the best of people.” If ever a writer/director put the philosophy driving his movies into dialogue, this quote, coming midway through Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth, is among the most accurate. Alex Ross Perry makes films about ugly people. There’s no getting around […]
I hate to say it. This film received bad reviews so I’m not breaking any ground with this declaration. But I’m only ten minutes into Jellyfish Eyes, and it’s terrible. Like Power Rangers meets Troll 2 trying to do E.T. terrible. I’ll admit I’ve never seen more than a half-minute clip of Power Rangers, nor […]