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WALL·E (2008, Andrew Stanton)
WALL·E might be the first major Hollywood production not to feature a speaking protagonist in a while. I can’t remember the last one. WALL·E, the robot, makes some emotive sounds and mispronounces his girlfriend’s name, but he communicates through action, not through verbalization. It’s rather effective, since the robot’s supposed to be adorable and Pixar’s… 📖
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Assault on Precinct 13 (2005, Jean-François Richet)
Assault on Precinct 13 doesn’t remind of an early 1990s action movie because of Dorian Harewood, Kim Coates or Brian Dennehy showing up–or even because of the movie specific end credits song (by KRS-One no less). It doesn’t even remind of that genre because it lifts the icicle shamelessly from Die Hard 2. Even the… 📖
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The Usual Suspects (1995, Bryan Singer)
Seeing as how The Usual Suspects popularized the major twist ending–that contrivance having now plagued American cinema for the last dozen years–it’s interesting to see it again. I haven’t seen the film in years (probably ten, at least nine), but I remember the last time I watched it, I thought about what was true and… 📖
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Tremors (1990, Ron Underwood)
Tremors is a unique film. Even with the derivative setting–the isolated desert town reminds of 1950s Universal sci-fi pictures–and whole “Jaws with giant worms” aspect, it’s a monster slash thriller slash comedy. It starts a comedy and ends one, with S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock’s script full of comedic dialogue, in addition to all the… 📖
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Dead of Winter (1987, Arthur Penn)
Loathe as I am to be glib about a director like Arthur Penn, Dead of Winter comes off like a TNT Original Movie. Penn proves himself–with the exception of maybe one scene and even then it’s awkward because it’s Arthur Penn using Steadicam–almost completely inept at directing a thriller. The script’s hardly anything special and… 📖
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Howard the Duck (1986, Willard Huyck)
It’d be interesting to know how much of the relationship between Howard and Lea Thompson got toned down, like if Huyck and Katz originally had them more visibly romantically involved. It wouldn’t be interesting to see cut scenes or even to read old drafts of the script, it’d just be interesting to know. Seeing cut… 📖
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Mongol (2007, Sergei Bodrov)
Mongol starts real strong. The Mongolian steppe lends itself quite well to Panavision composition and director Bodrov utilizes it fully. Bodrov’s approach to the material is interesting, if far from unique. For the Mongols riding on horses, he mimics Dances With Wolves. For battle scenes, especially at the end, he mimics Gladiator (which was just… 📖
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August (2008, Austin Chick)
August clocks in, with end credits, at eighty-four minutes. I didn’t know the running time going in, so I wasn’t thinking about it. I would have guessed, just based on the perceptive passage, around two hours. My wife, not being a fan, probably would say three and a half. Doing a good movie in ninety… 📖
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The Morning After (1986, Sidney Lumet)
The Morning After is an awkward combination of thriller and adult drama. As a thriller, with Paul Chihara’s enthusiastic and bombastic score, it’s frequently annoying. Jane Fonda can scrub a crime scene of every thread of evidence, but the simple things–like dropping a succeeding lie or leaving all her personal belongings for the police to… 📖
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Miami Vice (2006, Michael Mann), the director’s cut
Michael Mann’s director’s cuts are sometimes large and sometimes small. They usually include music changes. In the case of Miami Vice, he adds an opening, changes some music and does a few little things. It’s too bad, because even though it having an opening works out nice, neither of these major choices seem to be… 📖
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The Incredible Hulk (2008, Louis Leterrier)
All I wanted from The Incredible Hulk was dumb fun. I figured Louis Leterrier could deliver. Unfortunately, it’s not dumb fun, but Leterrier does deliver–and instead of fast food, it’s rather good French. Frequently, Hulk showcases Leterrier’s directorial abilities and they’re significant. Leterrier handles everything the story needs–be it rural or urban, Brazil or New… 📖
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Sinners in Paradise (1938, James Whale)
It’s James Whale’s “Gilligan’s Island,” only with more rear screen projection, as a plane crash in the Pacific brings a varied bunch together on a tropical island. It’s a boring sixty-five minutes–the script’s real stagy, with a two or three week (there’s a lot of problems with time) break in the middle, with the second… 📖
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In Good Company (2004, Chris Weitz)
At its best, In Good Company is never very good–the soundtrack is one of the worst I can remember–but Chris Weitz’s ineptitude is something to behold. His plot is predictable, his characters are boring, and everything feels like it’s been done before. I mean, who would have thought Dennis Quaid would have found out his… 📖
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Manhunter (1986, Michael Mann), the restored director's cut
The last time I watched Manhunter (the first time I saw the director’s cut), my friend maintained the film’s superiority laid in the added scenes. The director’s cut mostly features more scenes concerning the effect of manhunting serial killers on William Petersen’s character. On this viewing, it’s clear the film’s greatness isn’t so simply assigned.… 📖
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Madigan (1968, Don Siegel)
Madigan ends really well, deceptively well, but the whole film is rather well-written. The problems are plot and production related. I suppose there’s some problems with unbelievable character relationships too–for example, Richard Widmark’s workaholic cop and Inger Stevens’s would-be social climber are never a credible couple. There’s also a big problem with the brief implication… 📖
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First Blood (1982, Ted Kotcheff)
Maybe if it weren’t for the Stephen J. Cannell television techniques (cars flying through the air or exploding on impact), the asinine, comedic banter between the deputies, some poor writing and Richard Crenna, First Blood might have been okay. Ted Kotcheff isn’t a good director though, so maybe not. Kotcheff shoots exteriors well (the stuff… 📖
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Vital Signs (1990, Marisa Silver)
I’d forgotten grown men used to wear cut-off, midriff-revealing shirts. Adrian Pasdar does in the final scene of Vital Signs. It’s horrifying. Pasdar also bulks up throughout the picture, maybe for his shirtless scenes in the late second act, or for that closing shot. And even though Vital Signs is tripe, another failed studio attempt… 📖
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The Silence of the Lambs (1991, Jonathan Demme)
No matter how hard Howard Shore’s score tries, The Silence of the Lambs is just a serial killer movie. I knew it was just a serial killer movie–that realization had occurred to me quite a long time ago–but its adherence to genre standards are still somewhat surprising. The movie wastes so much time on Anthony… 📖
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The Thing (1982, John Carpenter)
I always say John Carpenter needs to direct something else, something non-genre. A romantic comedy perhaps or a family drama. I guess it never occurred to me, but with The Thing, Carpenter is directing something else. It’s kind of too bad, his best film is the one–in some ways–least like his others. In The Thing,… 📖
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Taxi 2 (2000, Gérard Krawczyk)
Taxi 2 is a sequel in the least artistic, but possibly most admirable way. It picks up an indeterminate time after the first movie, doesn’t deal with the first movie’s conclusion (Samy Naceri becoming a race car driver), and doesn’t really have a story. Instead, it opens with a car chase, then some humor, then… 📖
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Taking Care of Business (1990, Arthur Hiller)
Hard as it is to believe, I’d sort of forgotten about Jim Belushi having a film career. For a while during Taking Care of Business, I kept thinking I’d seen him in something recently (which I haven’t), then I realized… his performance in the movie is a rip on Bill Murray. Expressions, tone of voice,… 📖
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Hollywoodland (2006, Allen Coulter)
Hollywoodland is not a narrative mess. It’d be a far more interesting (and far less boring) two hours if it were. Instead, Paul Bernbaum’s plotting is intentional and considered. Neither Bernbaum nor director Allen Coulter seem to understand the problems with having two protagonists, not having anything to do with each other, juxtaposed for a… 📖
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Year of the Comet (1992, Peter Yates)
As far as I know, Year of the Comet completes the Louis Jordan as a mad scientist in search of eternal youth (continuing from his two Swamp Thing movies). There’s something so perfect about Jordan pursuing eternal youth, it’s not even questioned. William Goldman uses the device to complicate things in Year of the Comet,… 📖
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008, Steven Spielberg)
The biggest development, in terms of script, in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull might actually be George Lucas’s fingerprints. Between Last Crusade and this sequel, Lucas created the “Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” television series and introduced the idea of canon to the series. As an example, in Crystal Skull, Harrison Ford… 📖
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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, Steven Spielberg)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade shows off Steven Spielberg’s comedic skills. Not just in his direction of the scenes between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, but also in the film’s overall tone. At the beginning, as River Phoenix is running from the bad guys on the train, Spielberg homages Buster Keaton (and rather well).… 📖
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Dedication (2007, Justin Theroux)
Is it possible to use The Doors’ “The End” without it recalling Apocalypse Now? Even if it’s just the opening snippet. No, it’s not. Especially not when you do it twice like Theroux does in Dedication. But Theroux harkening back to great films (or, hey, if he even harkened back to a mediocre one) would… 📖
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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984, Steven Spielberg)
I can understand Chinese people being upset with the stereotypes–Spielberg and company basically lift all the anti-Japanese stereotypes from early 1940s American films and apply them to the Chinese–but at least they’re only goofy and mischievous. The Indians in the film are downright evil. Temple of Doom‘s atrocious script (I suppose Willard Huyck and Gloria… 📖
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Count Yorga, Vampire (1970, Bob Kelljan)
Count Yorga, Vampire is a retelling of Dracula, modernizing it to the then-contemporary 1970 and changing the locale to Los Angeles. It’s also incredibly low budget–not so low budget it has bad acting (its acting is actually the strong-point)–but it has blacked out windows on houses and cars (so night scenes can be shot at… 📖
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Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Steven Spielberg)
Don Siegel had an anecdote about the length of titles. He showed them to his boss, who kept asking for them to be longer, then showed them to the boss again, telling him each time he’d made the changes. In fact, he had not–his boss was simply familiar with the titles and couldn’t gauge the… 📖
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Dan in Real Life (2007, Peter Hedges)
Is there a dearth of WASP family dramas right now? I guess there must be. Dan in Real Life certainly fills the void–and is probably the only time I’ve ever thought about a movie in terms of it being a WASP affair (that accusation against Wes Anderson is, for example, one I find unfounded). It’s… 📖
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Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007, Colin Strause and Greg Strause)
Surprisingly, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem does elicit some conversation. Or, at least the first forty or so minutes of it does. The rest might elicit armed revolt, I’ll never know. The movie’s interesting for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s atrocious. From the incompetent direction–the Strause brothers apparently couldn’t handle a Doublemint commercial–to the cheap CG… 📖
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Rollerball (1975, Norman Jewison)
Somehow, it’s impossible to find an actual Tarkovsky quote regarding 2001 online, just tidbits about Solaris being his humanist response to that film. Damn. I wanted to open with a comment about Norman Jewison sharing the opinion about the science fiction genre. Rollerball‘s a technical masterpiece. Jewison’s sense of composition and editing have never been… 📖
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The Squeeze (1987, Roger Young)
Confused mess of a comedy has regular guy Michael Keaton getting involved in a mystery, which brings Rae Dawn Chong into the movie. Chong’s terrible, Keaton’s okay. Opens strong, goes quickly to pot, though–if you make it through–the finale is kind of funny. Sturdy support from Joe Pantoliano; he’s just not in it enough. Great… 📖
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Redbelt (2008, David Mamet)
I was apprehensive about Redbelt–mostly due to the awkward trailers–but it was totally unfounded. The film’s story, Mamet’s narrative, resists being abbreviated or advertised. It’s all very gradual, very quiet, which each scene building on the one previous. It’s probably Mamet’s finest film as a director, his widescreen composition is wonderful–there’s this one shot where… 📖
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Man-Thing (2005, Brett Leonard)
I’ve actually seen Man-Thing before, back when it aired on Sci-Fi. Lionsgate’s DVD release has it in what appears to be an open matte 16:9, as opposed to 2.35:1 (which is how Sci-Fi aired it). So, I matted the DVD and tried the uncut version. It’s probably no better than the televised, but–and here’s why… 📖
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Arthur (1981, Steve Gordon)
Steve Gordon died the year after Arthur came out, so he never made any other films, which is an exceptional tragedy. Arthur is a singular comedy–it’s a mix of laugh-out-loud comedy, romantic comedy, sincere human relationships and genuine character development. The first two are not mutually exclusive, but I’m not even sure Woody Allen’s managed… 📖
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Iron Man (2008, Jon Favreau)
Iron Man is a qualified success. Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic throughout–the movie’s greatest strength is how much screen time he gets–and Jon Favreau does really well with the Iron Man scenes and the action scenes in general (he does terrible with almost everything else). But, while it also moderately succeeds as a romantic comedy–Downey… 📖
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Harry and the Hendersons (1987, William Dear)
Harry and the Hendersons has to be one of the most emotionally manipulative movies ever made. Amblin produced it (though Spielberg’s name isn’t on the credits anywhere) and it comes off as the finale part of the E.T. and Gremlins trilogy. Except in this one, it isn’t about a boy and his Bigfoot, it’s about… 📖