Category: ★
-
Miss Hokusai is the story of real person Katsushika Ōi. Well, stories of real person Katsushika Ōi. The anime is an episodic memoir mostly about Ōi (voiced by Anne Watanabe) and her younger sister, O-Nao (voiced by Shimizu Shion). The film doesn’t specify but they’re half-sisters, daughters to famous Japanese Edo period artist Katsushika Hokusai…
-
In the Heights is anemic. Tedious and anemic. There are some good performances—Jimmy Smits is great, Gregory Diaz IV seems to be good (he doesn’t get a lot of acting to do), and Daphne Rubin-Vega similarly would be good if it weren’t for Chu’s terrible direction. But since Heights is all about Anthony Ramos and…
-
Departures suffers for its DV photography. Suffers. Hamada Takeshi cannot figure out how to light for the video and, as a result, the film never looks good. Maybe if director Takita were somehow taking it into account, but no, Takita just pretends it doesn’t look like an ornate Hi8 camcorder production. With some competent mise-en-scène,…
-
Somehow this four hour adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma has rapidly delivered dialogue but never manages to work up any energy. It’s just people talking fast at one another, then lengthy “action” sequences, then more fast talking, then more dragging out. It’s especially noticeable with something like the oft-adapted Emma because there apparently isn’t a…
-
For most of Night Nurse’s seventy-two minute runtime, lead Barbara Stanwyck is able to keep the film going just through her intensity. She’s a new nurse on her first assignment after the hospital, caring for a couple of anemic kids in their mansion, condo apartments, or just studio apartment set. The hospital set in Night…
-
There are a handful of Pre-Code elements in Professional Sweetheart it doesn’t seem like the Code broke so much as saved movies from. For instance, when Ginger Rogers needs to break out of her Stepford Wives mindset—Kentucky cracker Norman Foster has beaten her into it—all the city boys need to do is put her former…
-
The best performance in Of Human Bondage is Frances Dee; despite doing a lot of close-up one-shots with the actors staring directly into the camera, the only time director Cromwell ever gives one anything to do is Dee. She’s mooning over Leslie Howard, which just draws attention to how little Howard mooned over anyone in…
-
The most interesting part of The Benson Murder Case is the Black Tuesday setting. I missed the newspaper dates for the montage about the stock market crash so I’m not sure if they do the Black Tuesday or just a Black Tuesday, but the movie opens with broker Richard Tucker selling off all his clients’…
-
At one point or another, everyone in Broken Arrow tries very hard and gives it their all. Sometimes it works out, like when Samantha Mathis has her violence free stunt sequences or Delroy Lindo gets to deliver a lousy line well, sometimes it doesn’t work out, like Howie Long as one of the goons or……
-
Once The History of Time Travel gets to the gimmick, it’s a good gimmick. Writer and director Kennedy even manages to get a good finish with the gimmick, which is something since it means making the third act of History incredibly tedious to build anticipation. And a lot of History has already been tedious, so…
-
I’m not sure what I thought Elizabeth Is Missing was going to be—I only half read a description—but when it became clear Glenda Jackson’s character (not Elizabeth) would be searching for that character (played by Maggie Steed) but also Jackson having Alzheimer’s and also sort of live action flashbacks with her younger self… Well, I…
-
Many years ago, Val Kilmer talked about how the original Tombstone director got replaced and one of that guy’s crimes was making the actors wear accurate textiles, which doesn’t matter on film. You can have a lightweight poncho and it’ll look the same on screen. Welp. I don’t know if it’s the benefits of shooting…
-
The Suspect is the unlikely tale of middle aged shopkeeper Charles Laughton, who forms a friendship with a young woman in need (Ella Raines), which gets him in trouble with his wife, Rosalind Ivan. There are complications—the film’s established Ivan has been a horrible wife to Laughton and a bad mother to their son, Dean…
-
The Pay-Off opens with young lovers William Janney and Marian Nixon in Central Park, snuggle-napping on a bench in the middle of the night because they’re got to maintain their chastity. Everything’s about to change for them because Janney’s finally saved up enough money they can get married, only he talks about it too loud…
-
It’s unclear for a while but what The Call needs more than anything else is a great villain. It’s got its villains, starting with very bad mom Lee El, but she’s not great. She’s kind of one note too, with writer and director Lee cutting away from her when she’s going to be establishing the…
-
The Invisible Man is surprisingly okay. I mean, once you realize it’s just going to be lead Elisabeth Moss in constant terror of an invisible abusive partner lashing out at her and Moss is good at being terrified for long periods, it seems like a bit of a gimme, but until the middle of the…
-
It makes sense director Lorenze never made any other films after Back Page because there’s no easy way to describe the disinterested direction. Well, outside Lorenze and cinematographer James S. Brown Jr. using the same exact camera composition for what seems like ninety percent of the film. When there’s an actual reaction close-up of someone…
-
I wasn’t aware of Red Scorpion’s production history, which has original distributor Warner Bros. pulling out because it filmed in Namibia, under apartheid South African control at the time, as well as the investors and producers being pro-apartheid… you’d think Warner would’ve checked. You’d hoped Warner would’ve checked. And, now, if we can “but anyway”…
-
Outside allowing Chris Pine to charmingly mug for the camera while doing an eighties men’s fashion parade, there’s not much reason for its 1984 setting. Unless they thought it would be absurd if Wonder Woman Gal Gadot pined after dead WWI love Pine for more than sixty-five years or so. No reason for the setting…
-
All WarGames really needs to be better is a good script rewrite, a better director (apparently there are some leftover shots from when Martin Brest tried directing it but got fired), and more John Wood. The Arthur B. Rubinstein music is a little iffy too but has its charms. And WarGames has its charms. Matthew…
-
The Perfect Host is clearly on a budget. It’s one of those carefully constructed on a budget movies, where you see the inside of the police station but never the outside and you can hear the other detectives, but it’s always just talky cops Nathaniel Parker and Joseph Will. They’re working a bank robbery, which…
-
Enola Holmes is a solid vehicle for the proposition of lead Millie Bobby Brown as a movie star—she infrequently narrates to great effect, in a manner far more Ferris Bueller than John Watson (more on the infrequently in a bit). But as almost anything else the movie fizzles. Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes? He’s not…
-
I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to see Ashfall if it hadn’t been for a blogathon. Maybe never. While I’m a Ma Dong-seok fan because how can you not be, I’ve always been lukewarm on top-billed Lee Byung-hun. Lee’s not actually the lead; the lead is Ha Jung-woo, who I don’t follow.…
-
For its protracted 106 minute runtime, Vampira and Me is a combination of tragic, frustrating, annoying, and enthralling. The problem with the whole project is writer, producer, editor, director, and narrator Greene. Well, okay, the problem with any project about Vampira (Maila Nurmi) is the lack of extant footage of her television show, “The Vampira…
-
Solo: A Star Wars Story is juvenile, which might be what manages to save it. It’s got nothing but problems—a troubled production (director Howard took over from fired “executive producers” Christopher Miller and Phil Lord and shot seventy-percent of what’s in the film), an uninspired screenplay (by Empire and Jedi screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and his…
-
Ginger Snaps is almost there. Karen Walton’s script is almost there, Fawcett’s direction is almost there, Emily Perkins’s lead performance is almost there, Katharine Isabelle’s is… okay, it’s not almost there by the end, when Isabelle’s acting through latex makeup, but she’s good in the first act. Ginger Snaps coasts on the first act for…
-
The Appaloosa could be worse. Director Furie apes styles he doesn’t understand how to use—his Leone-esque angles, the Acid Western—with what’s a fairly traditional Western, albeit just with a Mexican supporting cast. Well, okay, so Marlon Brando is the only gringo playing a gringo. All the other White people are supposed to be Mexican. You…
-
The You in You Can’t Get Away With Murder refers to Billy Halop, nineteen year-old punk kid who doesn’t respect what sister Gale Page sacrifices for him and instead runs around with neighborhood tough Humphrey Bogart. They knock over gas stations, they play pool, it’s a good life… at least until things go wrong during…
-
The two most bewildering things about Annihilation are director Garland’s inability to frame for Panavision aspect ratio—did cinematographer Rob Hardy just not want to tell him he was reusing the same three close-up shots, with his subject on one side of the frame, looking off, the other three-quarters empty, or did Hardy not see a…
-
After a strong dinosaur suspense opening, with some futuristic submersible entering the closed Jurassic World bay to get something off the seafloor, Fallen Kingdom shockingly quickly becomes a remake of the first Jurassic Park sequel, Lost World. Like, so much you wish there were more in it so David Koepp got a credit through forced…
The Stop Button 