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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Gray Men, Gray World

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When I was sixteen, my parents gave me an omnibus edition of John le Carré's Karla novels ( Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable S...
Saturday, January 17, 2015

Rhythm Method

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Back when I was just out of college, I had a conversation with some friends over a game of spades about what you would have to score on the...
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Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Rethinking the American Canon

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Sometime last year, I finally started tagging posts in which I write about films by women. There is well-documented bias in the film indust...
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Sunday, January 04, 2015

Revenge of the Nerds

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Big Hero 6 (2014, directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams) is suggestive of why Disney bought Marvel a few years ago. They see potential b...
Thursday, January 01, 2015

Hindsight is 20/20

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It's customary for people who write about film to do retrospectives this time of the year. I'll make up a top whatever list eventua...
Wednesday, December 31, 2014

December Potpourri

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I'm behind on my reviews again. Here's a round-up of what I've seen recently:
Friday, December 26, 2014

There and Back Again

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There's a scene near the very end of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014, directed by Peter Jackson) that highlights the s...
Thursday, December 18, 2014

Superhero Blues

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Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu), like many of the director's films, s...
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Wednesday, December 03, 2014

If That Mockingjay Won't Sing...

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The third film in the Hunger Games series suffers dramatically from being only half a movie. I mean that literally. The Hunger Games: Mock...
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Saturday, November 29, 2014

Beyond the Event Horizon

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I was having a conversation with some movie friends of mine last week when I opined that I don't think Christopher Nolan knows what a m...
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Saturday, November 22, 2014

Race Relations

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Dear White People (2014, directed by Justin Simien) is a portrait of entitlement and privilege as satire and farce. That it's set at a...
Saturday, November 15, 2014

Not Your Disney Princess

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It's a shame that the supernova of Hayao Miyazaki has sometimes blinded the world to the fact that there's another genius working a...
Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Field of (Broken) Dreams

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I don't know what to make of director Ben Wheatley. He obviously knows how to make a good film. Whatever my complaints with Kill List ...
1 comment:
Friday, October 31, 2014

Speak of the Devil

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Before it flies off the rails at the end, Here Comes the Devil (2013, directed by Adrián García Bogliano) builds a formidable ambiance of ...
Thursday, October 30, 2014

Seventh Sojourn

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I mostly skipped the Friday the 13th sequels after number three (it was in 3-D and I was still a teenage gore hound at the time). I eventu...
Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

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I often don't know how to react to nunsploitation movies. Apart from the feminist and queer-activist objections that I might raise abou...
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Tuesday, October 28, 2014

The Worm Turns

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Ken Russell's dalliances with the horror genre were always perverse. Whether the artsy take on nunsploitation in The Devils or the evo...
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Sunday, October 26, 2014

Female Bonding

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Black Rock (2012, directed by Katie Aselton) is a feminist variant of a familiar genre trope, in which a group of friends head out into th...
Saturday, October 25, 2014

Night Bus to Astaroth

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Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973, directed by Richard Blackburn) is one of those odd little films orphaned by the busi...
Thursday, October 23, 2014

Thank You For Your Service

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I went into The Guest (2013, directed by Adam Wingard) more or less blind. I had no clue what it was about or if it had good reviews or an...
Sunday, October 19, 2014

Blood of the Dragon

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A friend of mine described Dracula Untold (2014, directed by Gary Shore) as " 300 with vampires." I can see what she means. Any...
Saturday, October 18, 2014

The After Party

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At the time of its release, I remember people describing The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999, directed by Katt Shea) as a sequel no one wanted. I mea...
Thursday, October 16, 2014

Highschool Sweethearts

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All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006, directed by Jonathan Levine) had a complicated release. Made and released in other parts of the world...
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Sunday, October 12, 2014

Sweets to the Sweet

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Candyman (1992, directed by Bernard Rose) is the best film adaptation of Clive Barker. It's a film that fulfills the promise those blu...
Saturday, October 11, 2014

Prom Night

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There's a legend about Stephen King's first published novel, Carrie , in which Doubleday editor Bill Thompson was convinced to buy ...
Friday, October 10, 2014

The Cold Shoulder

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Some of the grisliest of the horror stories from the old E. C. Comics were published in their crime titles. The covers that got them in the...
Sunday, October 05, 2014

Teenage Werewolves in Love

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Blood and Chocolate (2007, directed by Katja von Garnier) is an early attempt at tapping into the marketplace for young adult fiction (it...
Saturday, October 04, 2014

Alphabet Soup

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The ABCs of Death (2013, various directors) is the anthology movie as complete clusterfuck. The premise finds 26 filmmakers assigned a wor...
Friday, October 03, 2014

On the Wagon

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Liam Neeson, now in his sixties, is an unlikely candidate for action hero super-stardom, but that's where his career finds itself these...
Thursday, October 02, 2014

Who Fears the Devil?

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There's a party game called "Werewolf" in which three players are werewolves and the rest of the party is villagers. Every ...
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