Movies

This is a terrible movie. The combined force of hardcore David Lynch and Dune fans ensure it gets more respect than it deserves. I’ve heard people say that Dune‘s costume and set design is worth praise, but it’s really not.…

Eastern Promises finds new water in the gangster movie well by focusing on a new corner. Italians are no longer the focus here but instead Russians, and Eastern Promises finds an incredibly engaging medium between their fascinating culture and a…

Using the NES version cheapens this a bit to any ‘Tetris’ aficionado, but ‘Ecstasy of Order’ is sincere and features a diverse, likable cast.

Frustrating in how almost perfect it is as a biopic about the infamous director’s life, the script of Ed Wood is overly hammy and comedic. This homage runs the risk of insincerity and losing the very real heart that the…

Name(s): Edge of Tomorrow / Live. Die. Repeat. This is a really fun concept. Edge of Tomorrow works as a fascination of basic wish-fulfillment, in the same way traditional time travel stories do. What if you could run through a…

‘El Camino’ is a dressed-up but empty continuation of ‘Breaking Bad’s’ lesser material. Unwilling to change the canon, the suspense falls flat.

David Lynch’s Eraserhead is accomplished in the sense that it really feels like a nightmare come to the screen, complete with a randomly shifting narrative and odd symbolism that’ll turn any viewer into a dream interpreter, but the horror is…

The action scenes are decent but frankly token and lack suspense. The plot is completely straightforward. So, why did Escape from New York inspire video games? Because it’s fun. A very capable director avoids the flubs of typical cult films,…

The Evil Dead movies are better at being funny than they are at being scary, so I’m pleased to see the burgeoning sense of parody in Evil Dead II. Still, there are many slow moments in the movie due to…

David Cronenberg was about 56 years old at the time of writing eXistenZ and tackles the virtual reality craze as intelligently as you’d expect an old man to: embarrassingly. Technically and thematically, it’s just as instantly dated and worn out…

Eyes Wide Shut is a Stanley Kubrick take on the original story of loyalty and natural temptation featuring the director’s usual crystal clear, beautiful cinematography (despite not being shot in New York City) and some intriguing symbolism, but is hurt…

Fallen Angels is better than Chungking Express. More effort is put into having the disparate stories connect to each other both literally and thematically. As a wandering city romantic I wanted to like this more than I did, but Wong…

Yeah, I don’t have to think twice about it: Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of the best animated family movies ever made. First of all, the stop motion is fantastic and total eye candy, much better than garbage CG. Second,…

I’ve never read the Hunter S. Thompson novel but I’ve no doubt it establishes its themes better by keeping Raoul Duke as a constant narrator. For all his ramblings about the American Dream in the movie, the fact that any…

Thoughts on David Fincher’s 1999 classic ‘Fight Club,’ namely its successes as entertainment and failures as art.

AKA: Rambo When I heard First Blood was an action movie that focused on strategy and stealth over acrobatics and luck, I was sure I was going to love it. Hell, it even stars Sylvester Stallone. Who isn’t charmed? But…

It’s incredibly endearing that Following is exactly like what you’d expect a debut budget film from Christopher Nolan to be like. That’s regarding both what’s praiseworthy and budgetary restraints. Nolan’s lean plotting centered around lead characters is all here, but…

Frantic is one of Polanski‘s first steps out of the darkness of his early work. From despair to mere cynicism. In what’s one of the director’s most Hitchcockian suspense tales, the nerdy side of Ford must unite with the naughty…

I find it to be a rare case when a pioneering movie doesn’t hold up well, and it’s a disappointing one as well when the sacred cow is too old and has to be put down—but Friday the 13th is…

If you take away the camp from James Bond, you have to be careful that there’s anything else to look at other than the rug you just pulled. From Russia with Love removes the charm and exotic Caribbean/science-fiction wonder from…

The first half of the movie that takes place in boot camp goes on a bit too long for its own good, being almost entirely carried by R. Lee Ermey’s witty (but eventually tedious) one-liners, but Full Metal Jacket is…

A renowned director like Jim Jarmusch combined with one of the greatest bands in history makes Gimme Danger sound like a recipe for success. But The Stooges brought their A-game decades ago, and it’s left to Jarmusch to underperform. This…

I don’t think I’ll ever understand what makes a man a slasher fan. Is it the tension? The tension that exists for less than 50% of every one of these “classics?” It can’t be the teen movie fluff that inadequately…

The film about love in the 21st century, and what’s incredible is that it may be so for centuries more. In a society where individuals are growing increasingly distant and romance becomes more necessary for the only genuine emotional connections…

I feel slightly guilty about rating High and Low this high, because while its deliberate pacing with separating the thriller (the high) from the investigation (the low) is a novel idea that lends it a lot of personality, it’s hard…

AKA: Hausu House is so fun and unique that I’m almost surprised it hasn’t found major mainstream popularity. I never would’ve heard of it if not for the internet. For how zany and psychedelic the entire experience is, I found…

Yes, the premise sounds cute. For a half-hour, I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK even feels cute, but the film’s devotion to setting building over plot can’t sustain itself due to the strangling nature of this schizophrenic hospital’s culture. Deciphering…

In the Mouth of Madness has John Carpenter attempting his most direct Lovecraft tribute yet, complete with genuinely disturbing imagery and special effects that rival The Thing. There’s evidence of evolution here but also the opposite. Carpenter’s lost his sense…

At first it seemed some more camp would do the film some favors. Indiana Jones is inspired by old adventure radio serials, yet Raiders lacked much of a sense of danger. The problem? The camp is bland, and it never…

Inferno could get any Suspiria fan excited, being a semi-sequel and all, but now I wish it was never related. It feels like Suspiria with its spine ripped out. The same colors are used but the lighting is extremely dim…

Inland Empire (IE) beats out Eraserhead for the scarier surrealist movie, mostly because it has much less of David Lynch‘s diffident, “unintentional” humor. Frustratingly enough, that humor still shows up in IE from time to time, but despite its incomprehensibility,…

As a folk fan, Inside Llewyn Davis is a heavy disappointment. I can’t buy into it as a portrayal of the early-60s folk scene because the Coen bros’ dialogue is too crass, modern, and maybe simply anachronistic. The intense bitterness…

The McCarthyism allegory was never necessary to induce fear. It worked in the first place because assimilation and ostracization are a natural human phenomenon in any culture. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a good movie that avoids becoming a…

Very solid stuff. Burlyaev’s performance is one of the best I’ve seen from a child. Tarkovsky’s dream sequences and the lighting techniques he uses to divide them from reality are a highlight. Otherwise, Ivan’s Childhood didn’t grab me too much…

Though it arguably has Quentin Tarantino‘s best soundtrack, Jackie Brown is universally considered the “least Tarantino” movie. To a Tarantino fan, that means it lacks all of what makes the director’s films so fun and unique. Jackie Brown is a…

Assessing Jaws is a little difficult, as the first half is just decent, but it builds empathy for the three characters in the second half, which is one of my favorite stretches of any film. Everything from when they board…

Ho ho holy shit, why are people so bad at critiquing ‘Jingle All the Way?’ Let me show you how a one-horse open slay is done.

Almost as frustrating as it is good, because Kagemusha is close to being an all-time masterpiece that’s brought down by the randomly weak writing. Not enough attention is paid to the main character’s development, and many scenes are unimportant, dragged…

Considered Roman Polanski‘s first triumph, Knife in the Water is still a modest one at that. One of those simple “portrait of life” films, this one portrays a rivalry between a young boy and an older man as they both…

With Le Samouraï, Jean-Pierre Melville crafts a minimalist noir where absolute silence is golden, a foil to the heavy use of grey tones that cast dark, foreboding clouds over the slow proceedings. Possibly the most beautiful film of the ’60s,…

I weep for Léon: The Professional because the potential really is there. The premise is great, they really nail the sense of style, and characters are strong (even though Gary Oldman is in the wrong movie; it’s often said because…

Lost Highway is the worst kind of surrealist film in that it challenges the audience to find meaning in it without a hint that any actually exists. Another David Lynch movie, Mulholland Drive, supplies actual characters and a mystery to…

Conceptually, Lost in Translation is a brilliant movie. Capitalizing on alienated people looking for romance by placing them in a culture they can’t connect to as another country, and the cinematography further empathizing crowdedness and the disorienting size of the…

George Miller must’ve felt like he won the jackpot for making as huge a profit from something like Mad Max. It’s a miracle hit, if you ask me. To be fair, I find the dystopian settings of these late ’70s…

Kind of like a “less bullshit” King of Kong. Man vs Snake is one of the fairest portrayals of gaming I’ve seen in a movie. That definitely counts for something, as many devolve into reductionist “look at the freakshow” shame…

Some claim this critical and commercial flop by Tim Burton deserves reevaluation, but the truth about ‘Mars Attacks!’ is out there…

Holy smokes, a Coen bros. movie that doesn’t have anything that really irks me. Miller’s Crossing omits the majority of their blandly juvenile humor and it turns out they actually have talent for creating dignified drama. Makes you wonder what…

Mission: Impossible is so bloody solid! But so damn impersonal, which is my typical response to older action films. I love Brian De Palma‘s excessive bombast, but it’s not excessive here. The scale of each scene is appropriate though obviously…

Mulholland Drive works because David Lynch finally bends his surrealism around a storyline instead of shoving the storyline into the surrealism. Because Mulholland Drive is fairly straightforward, it provides the audience a tangible mystery and characters to motivate the deciphering…

The most shocking thing about Naked Lunch is how such an insanely weird movie ends up so incredibly boring. The 100% deadpan humor cannot survive for two hours, and the bizarre focus on constant exposition otherwise eventually makes this a…

Maybe you’ll consider me more braindead than any creature seen in this movie, because I can’t for the life of me see why anyone still finds entertainment value in Night of the Living Dead. On a measly budget of $100,000…

No Country for Old Men is the Coen bros. in typical and top form. That is, it’s a thriller of misfortunes that goes without their usual childish snickering at the audience and ironic, blasé mockery of tropes. When it’s at…

No End is both expected and peculiar in Kieslowski‘s oeuvre, as it contains both a humanistic drama and a legal/political one, but these two stories are separate and merely intertwine with a set of linked characters. One half displays the…

Park Chan-wook‘s mixed influences have never been so fine a solution: a neo-noir that finds absurd dreamlike fantasies in the isolated, manic delusions of its central characters, where it prunes the most desperate motivations of the subconscious to mine intense…

I want to love Once Upon a Time in America (OUaTiA). Sergio Leone‘s sense of scale and ability to capture the landscape have not diminished at all, and there’s a great basic story here with a very cool generational progression,…

I never expected any western to approach the quality of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but Once Upon a Time in the West both gave me hope and succeeded. The overstretched beginning is fairly flat, but once Charles…

The most frustrating Dario Argento film I’ve seen yet, and that’s saying something. The premise of Opera is fantastic, but that’s almost as far as it gets. There’s the potential for a horror masterpiece here, so Argento’s usual quirks bring…

If you claim to love action movies for the spectacle, then I dare say we shouldn’t expect much more than Pacific Rim in this day and age. Take it from a mecha anime fan: this is good but also quite…

‘Paradise Lost’ documents three teenagers persecuted by conservatives’ last bastion against ’90s counterculture in the noose of the Bible Belt.

Focuses on a normal life in Paterson, New Jersey but while the characters are likable it becomes unrealistic to insist on such surface characters and a stiff script. It’s often about complacency and so dedicated to that that the movie…