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Friday, January 31, 2014

Mulling Over 2013

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My ballot for the Muriel awards is due tomorrow and I have no freaking idea what's going to be on it. 2013 was one of those years that ...
3 comments:
Thursday, January 30, 2014

Nothing Up My Sleeve...

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 Now You See Me (2013, directed by Louis Leterrier) is candy. It's a caper movie about magicians, which is a high concept that says ev...
Monday, January 27, 2014

Hearts of Ice

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Frozen (2013, directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee) finds Disney's animation unit making some sport of its own traditions. In doing...
2 comments:
Saturday, January 25, 2014

More Human Than Human

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I don't know what I was expecting from Spike Jonze's Her (2013), but whatever preconceptions I may have had weren't even on t...
Wednesday, January 15, 2014

The Dragon's Lair

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In the taxonomy of movie monsters I keep in the back of my mind, the best dragons ever put on film are Vermithrax Pejorative from Dragonsl...
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Tuesday, January 07, 2014

The Good Arab

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The Attack (2012, directed by Ziad Doueiri) takes a difficult subject and crafts a noir thriller around it. In doing so, it runs rings aro...
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Friday, January 03, 2014

A Wolf in the Fold

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I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but I have a short list of filmmakers whose films I try to see at the first opportunity, often the ...
1 comment:
Monday, December 30, 2013

Midwestern Gothic

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"Hell, I even thought I was dead 'til I found out it was just that I was in Nebraska."--Little Bill Daggett, Unforgiven I do...
Sunday, December 22, 2013

Innocence and Experience

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I'm not entirely sure how to process Blue is the Warmest Color (2013, directed by Abdellatif Kechiche), because it short-circuits a lo...
Monday, December 16, 2013

Where There's Smoke

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013, directed by Francis Lawrence) is more or less the same film as its predecessor. The filmmakers behin...
Thursday, December 12, 2013

Dirty Laundry

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I saw a headline on one of the entertainment sites a few days ago that posed the question of whether or not Stephen Frears's new film, ...
Tuesday, December 10, 2013

The Big Quiz Redux

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This time of the year is kind of a slog for me, with most of my movie viewing confined to festival screeners (about which I can't write...
Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Dying in Dallas

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I've been dreading Dallas Buyers Club (2013, directed by Jean-Marc Vallee). I always dread films made by cisgender filmmakers in which...
2 comments:
Saturday, November 30, 2013

Ragnarok and Roll

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Thor: The Dark World (2013, directed by Alan Taylor) is a better film than its predecessor. It may be a better film than The Avengers , bu...
Sunday, November 24, 2013

The Modern Prometheus

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The last film I watched this October was James Whale's Frankenstein, a film I've written about twice before. I don't have a lot...
5 comments:
Friday, November 22, 2013

"Why, an Invisible Man Could Rule the World!"

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James Whale's adaptation of The Invisible Man (1933) is candy, pure and simple. Appropriate for Halloween, I think. It's the apoth...
3 comments:
Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Walking After Midnight

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I was home for Halloween this year, the first time in many years that I've been at home for the holiday. I live in small town America w...
Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Lost in the Woods

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At the end of Ritual ( Modus Anomali , 2012, directed by Joko Anwar), I wanted to refer to the movie by the title of "Ritual in Trans...
Saturday, November 09, 2013

Rat Race

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My friend, Renee, is absolutely mad for obscure horror movies. Every Halloween, she dredges up oddities from around the world to show at he...
Tuesday, November 05, 2013

Dying By Design

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The only way I can make sense of Dario Argento's 1980s output is if I consider it all as a merciless put-on. How else to approach a mov...
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Sunday, November 03, 2013

Going Through the Motions

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It's been a while since I've seen a movie as bad as Shiver (2012, directed by Julian Richards). I almost hate writing about it, to...
Saturday, November 02, 2013

Dancing on the Head of a Pin

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About a third of the way through The Prophecy (1995, directed by Gregory Widen), I stopped the movie and went and did something else. It...
Friday, November 01, 2013

Free Falling

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Gravity (2013, directed by Alfonso Cuarón) is a technical marvel and one of the most viscerally terrifying films I've ever seen. It...
Thursday, October 31, 2013

Inside Outside

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I think that you can't actually spoil a good movie, but I also know that many people think that spoilers are rude. This is a dilemma wh...
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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Not Constantinople

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For a filmmaker who isn't normally thought of as a genre director, Neil Jordan sure does make a lot of horror movies. Byzantium (2013)...
Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Mix and Match

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My friend, Roberta , teaches Italian film, so when she says I need to have more Italian films on my long Halloween slog, I'm inclined t...
Monday, October 28, 2013

Roll Them Bones

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During the golden age of Japanese film, Shôchiku was Japan's Tiffany studio, home to Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse, and Kinoshita. It's si...
Sunday, October 27, 2013

Cold Comfort

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I went into The Colony (2013, directed by Jeff Renfroe) completely blind. I knew nothing about it except that is was a science fiction/hor...
Friday, October 25, 2013

Lovecraft a Go-Go

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I first read The Dunwich Horror when I was fourteen, if I recall correctly. A haunter of used bookstores even then, I found the story in an...
Thursday, October 24, 2013

That Hellbound Train

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I took a break from new viewings last night to watch an old favorite. Here's what I wrote about Aldo Lado's Night Train Murders (1...
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