One thing about John Sayles: calling his films didactic or preachy seems like stating the obvious at this point, because that’s just kind of the way Sayles’ films are. From Matewan (1987) — a great film, but see it if only for the young Will Oldham — to Casa de Los Babys (2003), Sayles’ films [...]
No one blows shit up quite like Michael Bay. Roland Emmerich may flatten entire cities with tsunamis, and turn the earth’s crust into strips of taffy, but only Michael Bay has the gleeful abandon of a boy crashing his Matchboxes together. For a movie about robots who transform into different objects, each moving part inseparable [...]
In the very first fight sequence in Wilson Yip’s Ip Man (2008), the titular hero (played perfectly by Donnie Yen) faces off against a rival. Making the most minimal of gestures, the Wing Chun master Ip Man stands perfectly straight, his spine stiff and unbending, even during the spectacular drubbing he gives his opponent. In [...]
So my self-imposed challenge of the month of September was to write one blog entry a day – short little squibs, at the very least, then stretched if the movie, good or bad, warranted the extra space. So far, so good; except for a couple days here and there, I was able to muster the [...]
Ti West’s formal exercise in the babysitter-in-distress genre is, alas, little more than that, but it’s fascinatingly watchable in a kind of academic way. All the elements are in place: an oblivious college student (played by Levi’s model Jocelin Donahue), a one-time babysitting gig, a creaky mansion in the middle of nowhere, the house’s creepy [...]
Grace seems, at times, to be a cruel little film, but it’s probably one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in quite some time, its abysmal 4.5 rating on IMDB notwithstanding. The blurb (from USA Today, certainly more trustworthy than myself) compares Paul Solet’s film to “a Stephen King tale,” in contrast to a [...]
Since we’re experiencing a relative heatwave in the Bay Area, I thought I’d write about something vaguely appropriate. Bill Viola’s video is set in a 5,000-square kilometer salt lake in the Sahara Desert that receives 100 millimeters of rain a year, according to Wikipedia. (Chott el-Djerid is also famous for something entirely cinematically different: it [...]
As you folks can probably tell, I’m working my way through the summer movie franchises — for it certainly feels like summer in the Bay Area right now — and Blade nicely satisfies my jones for action-fantasy, especially if gouts of blood are involved. (You could do worse, like with Resident Evil, or with any [...]
Oh to live in a world populated by endless Kylies, in all their pink and light blue splendor, blonde curls forever tossed by the wind, a bombshell calmly oblivious to the chaos blooming around her, duplicate upon duplicate, doubling and redoubling into infinity. Or it may be some sort of cursed recursion, a tangled loop [...]
I could go on and on about how beautiful the Polish brothers’ Northfork looks – the way light shines through feathers, the stark gray beauty of the Montana landscape, the loneliness of weather-beaten farmhouses and the vastness of the sky swallowing them up, the visual humor of six men in black suits and hats filling [...]
This second half of Jean-Francois Richert’s gangster epic is slightly more disjointed, but its arguments make for a richer film. Removed from the more straightforward narrative arc of Mesrine’s early career and his marriages (his first is skipped in the former film), Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 echoes the peripatetic nature of this thief’s occupation. The [...]
With his cheekbones, scarily gaunt features, and what seems like a perpetual sneer, Vincent Cassel has a face made for gangster movies. But there’s no denying his low-key charm as well (though I think my women friends would disagree with “low-key”) — witness the twinkle in his eye when, like a shark, he encircles his [...]
I’ve come to realize that Will Ferrell’s secret comic weapon is the dullness of his eyes. No, really, bear with me here: he’s mastered the art of the blank stare, a look that seems to suggest that something you said just isn’t quite sinking in. (Which is why his Saturday Night Live impressions of George [...]
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Posted 22 September 2010
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In my completely voluntary trawl through Paul W. S. Anderson’s oeuvre — and I write “voluntary” to emphasize the fact that I wasn’t threatened with sharp implements to watch this — his 2004 goo-fest with the unwieldy and literal-minded title, AVP: Alien vs. Predator, actually stands as something of an achievement. Sure, it’s icky to [...]
Pointless, except for the one at the tip of the hatchet. Adam Green’s Hatchet — lauded, apparently, by Harry Knowles and MTV and genre film fests worldwide — was billed as “Old School American Horror,” which sounds a bit like a Chevy truck recall: “It’s not a remake, it’s not a sequel, and it’s not [...]
The Wily Filipino