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King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962, Honda Ishirô)
I thought movies about giant monsters fighting were supposed to be exciting, but apparently not. I haven’t seen King Kong vs. Godzilla in maybe fifteen years and now, this time, I watched the original Japanese version. Frighteningly, it’s only seven minutes longer, so I imagine the Americanized version is boring too. The main problem with… 📖
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Looking for Kitty (2004, Edward Burns)
After Ed Burns’s last couple films, I’d forgotten to expect something great from him. Looking for Kitty opens with a shot straight out of The Brothers McMullen, or at least a camera move straight out of it. Kitty also borrows a lot of the same music style and, watching the film, I kept remembering Burns’s… 📖
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Nighthawks (1981, Bruce Malmuth)
Catherine Mary Stewart’s British? She’s in Nighthawks for a second and she looked familiar but I don’t keep track of her filmography, so I didn’t find out until the end credits. (Actually, she’s Canadian, which is closer than I thought). Besides that trivia tidbit–if it even qualifies as a tidbit–the most amusing thing about Nighthawks… 📖
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Home for the Holidays (1995, Jodie Foster)
For the first thirty or so minutes, Home for the Holidays is exactly the film its trailer presented. It’s a genial family comedy with a recognizable cast, a mix of standard casting choices like Charles Durning (Dad), semi-standards like Anne Bancroft (Mom), and unknown ones like Geraldine Chaplin (crazy aunt). Even when Robert Downey Jr.… 📖
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The Silent Partner (1978, Daryl Duke)
The Silent Partner starts a little bit better than it turns out in the end, from a filmmaking standpoint. The sound design is so phenomenal in the build-up, I actually made note of it. I usually don’t make notes unless it’s something terrible and I want to make sure to bring it up. I fully… 📖
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Versus (2000, Kitamura Ryuhei), the ultimate version
I’m worried I’m tired. The last time I watched Versus, I gave it one. This time I give it three. There’s a slight difference in the version I watched–this time I watched the “Ultimate Version,” which has about the same running time, but ten minutes of reshot scenes. I guess there were some music changes,… 📖
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The Lookout (2007, Scott Frank)
Watching The Lookout, I never really wondered how Joseph Gordon-Levitt was going to do. I wondered about Jeff Daniels, for instance, since Daniels spent the late 1990s working up his number of excellent performances only to fade from things I watch. Gordon-Levitt… looking over his IMDb, I’m not sure the guy’s ever been bad. He… 📖
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Hostage (2005, Florent Emilio Siri)
Hostage, towards the end, plays a little like a Die Hard movie, which isn’t surprising, since Doug Richardson did write it (he also wrote Die Hard 2) and Willis, who’s good in Hostage, is usually best in… well, Die Hard movies, actually. Like those films, Hostage lets him emote and he does a good job… 📖
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Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004, Alexander Witt)
Trying to figure out how to start this post was incredibly difficult. As far as sequels go, Resident Evil: Apocalypse is, tonally, a terrible sequel to the first film, but it’s still a perfectly reasonable b-movie. The first film, visually, is classy compared to this one, which has lots of quick cuts during fight scenes.… 📖
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Seoul (2002, Nagasawa Masahiko)
An action slash thriller requires a couple things… action set pieces and, well, thrills. Seoul‘s got a couple action set pieces, beginning and end, and not much in the way of thrills. There’s a mystery angle and there are scenes with the cops inspecting crime scenes, but there’s no real investigation at any point. Both… 📖
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Evil Under the Sun (1982, Guy Hamilton)
As innocuous as Evil Under the Sun can get–and expecting anything else from it seems unintended–the film does have a slightly discomforting feel about it. Perhaps it’s the extraordinary level of benignity, but at times, it really does seem like Peter Ustinov (as Hercule Poirot) is going to be murdered by each and every person… 📖
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Zodiac (2007, David Fincher)
If Steven Spielberg used to be “the kid who’d never grow up,” I always figured David Fincher would always be “the disaffected teen who never grew up,” which is why Zodiac is so surprising. It’s a mature, thoughtful work, one I wouldn’t have even associated with Fincher if I hadn’t known. It’s calm and thoughtful,… 📖
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Broken Flowers (2005, Jim Jarmusch)
If I had any foresight, I would have realized Broken Flowers wasn’t going to end well. Actually, most of the film is just a ruse to disguise that fact. Instead of thinking about how the film was going to turn out, I spent all my time marveling at Jarmusch. His composition, his dialogue, everything, just… 📖
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The Nest (2002, Florent Emilio Siri)
It’s a French remake of Assault on Precinct 13, but with a healthy mix of disaster movie sentimentality (just as visible in, say, Die Hard, as in The Towering Inferno). That sentimentality isn’t bad, it’s a reward. You watch this incredibly manipulative film and then, in the end, you get some pretty music and some… 📖
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Resident Evil (2002, Paul W.S. Anderson)
I have a mild affection for Paul W.S. Anderson–or, at least, I think he gets a bad rap. I’ve never been able to easy prove it before, but Resident Evil certainly helps my argument for Anderson’s effectiveness as a director. The film opens with a nine or so minute tease, establishing the situation, then goes… 📖
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The Canary Murder Case (1929, Malcolm St. Clair and Frank Tuttle)
As an example of a transitional sound film–Canary Murder Case was filmed as a silent, then reconfigured as a talkie–the film’s very interesting. It’s an early talkie (1929) so there’s no sound design–there’s rarely any noise besides the talking and few sound effects, the actors aren’t ready for talking (for the most part), and the… 📖
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Parole, Inc. (1948, Alfred Zeisler)
I enjoy old b-movies. They tend to be harmless and occasionally amusing. Parole, Inc. might be a c-movie, however, since it’s not from a studio (I wonder if direct-to-DVD will ever, since real studios are now making them, raise to a b-movie quality level). Parole, Inc. isn’t really amusing. It’s a heavy-handed looked at parole… 📖
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Apartment Zero (1988, Martin Donovan)
Starting Apartment Zero, I couldn’t remember why I’d wanted to see the film. I had a feeling it was going to be something I’d since dismissed and it was–Apartment Zero is David Koepp’s first screenwriting credit. He co-wrote the film. Koepp’s an odd person to look for, since his writing is so vanilla and indistinct,… 📖
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Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999, Jim Jarmusch)
I’m having a hard time thinking of something to say about Ghost Dog. It’s perfect. Jarmusch doesn’t just do a bunch of good things or a bunch of right things. Every single thing he does is perfect. And Ghost Dog is perfect pretty early on too–in the first five or ten minutes, I was completely… 📖
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Ransom (1996, Ron Howard), the extended version
Ransom is not Richard Price’s only “big Hollywood” movie (and it’s probably not his most anomalous one either), but there’s something very particular about the film. You’re watching a mix of various 1990s genres–a Mel Gibson movie, a Richard Price cop movie, and a Ron Howard movie. Except not the current Oscar-bait Ron Howard, the… 📖
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Ocean’s Twelve (2004, Steven Soderbergh)
The amusement factor. Does that term even make any sense? Ocean’s Twelve is, in case anyone watching it was confused (which I find hard to believe, but of the principals, only George Clooney makes exclusively smart movies so Brad Pitt and Matt Damon fans are suspect), about enjoying itself. It throws itself a party no… 📖
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Under Siege (1992, Andrew Davis)
I suppose, if there were a quiz or something and I thought about it real hard, I’d remember Under Siege brought Tommy Lee Jones… well, not back exactly, so I guess just brought Tommy Lee Jones. Looking at his filmography and the dates, someone could wrongly argue Oliver Stone tried championing him–but it didn’t work… 📖
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Shadow of a Doubt (1943, Alfred Hitchcock)
Shadow of a Doubt is a strange one–the presence of Teresa Wright and the small town atmosphere and the Gregg Toland-esque (but not Gregg Toland) cinematography make it feel like William Wyler, the presence of Joseph Cotten and the camera angles and intricate sound design make it feel like Welles (or at least an RKO… 📖
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The Monster Squad (1987, Fred Dekker)
Fred Dekker can definitely compose a shot. For whatever its faults, The Monster Squad is one good looking film. Some of that credit belongs to the production designer and the cinematographer and the special effects people, but most of it belongs to Dekker. Dekker composes beautiful Panavision shots and he directs actors really well too–well,… 📖
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A Civil Action (1998, Steven Zaillian)
A Civil Action is somewhere in between a modestly budgeted Hollywood drama (you know, the kind they don’t make anymore unless it’s for Oscar season) and a wildly passionate–well, not art film, but it’s certainly something else. Steven Zaillian casts the film with a knowing grown-up indie eye (William H. Macy, Dan Hedaya playing a… 📖
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The Gauntlet (1977, Clint Eastwood)
I think I watched The Gauntlet for masochistic reasons, namely screenwriters Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack, the late 1970s, early 1980s version of Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner–incompetent Hollywood writers. Even so, the film’s not wholly terrible. It’s rarely exciting, just because the action sequences are so poorly written, and Clint approaches the whole thing… 📖
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Superman (1978, Richard Donner)
I love how the end of Superman, with the spinning back of the earth, causes so much trouble for people. My fiancée–before Marlon Brando had even gotten the kid into the spaceship–made me stop the movie twice (I had to tell her to stop, though I love her line about Superman having just as many… 📖
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The Seven-Ups (1973, Philip D’Antoni)
The Seven-Ups is a fascist daydream beyond almost any cinematic compare, certainly American cinema (except maybe a Charles Bronson movie from the 1980s or something). And it’s not a cheap, 1970s exploitation picture either. Yes, to some degree it’s cheap (Roy Scheider and Tony Lo Bianco are the only two recognizable principals), but producer and… 📖
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The Lady Vanishes (1938, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Lady Vanishes might be the most fun Hitchcock ever lets an audience have with one of his films. Vanishes maintains a comedic sensibility throughout and for the most part, that sensibility overtakes the mystery element. Even the mystery element gives way to an action element–besides North by Northwest (which only barely qualifies) and Foreign… 📖
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Undead (2003, Peter Spierig and Michael Spierig)
Has copyright lapsed on John Williams’s “Promenade (Tourists on the Menu)” composition from Jaws, because this film uses it all the time. While Undead is a fun little movie, I’m pretty sure Lionsgate would get their butts sued off if it got out they were violating such an obvious copyright, and I have to go… 📖
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Das Boot (1981, Wolfgang Petersen), the uncut version
Das Boot probably has–of serious films–the most number of alternate cuts released. Besides the two and a half hour theatrical version, there was a three and a half hour director’s cut (which I saw theatrically, so I suppose I only saw the original version on VHS), and finally, now, there’s the five hour “uncut version,”… 📖
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Alien: Resurrection (1997, Jean-Pierre Jeunet), the special edition
Joss Whedon has never met a cheap, cheesy one liner he didn’t like. He also feels the need to revise future technology based on modern developments (androids with wireless modems, which they would have had in the first Alien movies… except the lack of that technological possibility when said films were made). The first problem… 📖
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Letters from Iwo Jima (2006, Clint Eastwood)
It’d be absurdly obvious to point out Letters from Iwo Jima is an anomaly in Clint Eastwood’s body of work. Outside, well, some Japanese directors in the 1950s and 1960s, it’d probably be an anomaly in anyone’s oeuvre. It reminds me of a dream movie–some movie I watch in a dream and wake up and… 📖
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Flirting with Disaster (1996, David O. Russell)
The first forty-five minutes of Flirting with Disaster play like Woody Allen mixed with a 1990s Miramax indie, which makes sense, since Flirting is a 1990s Miramax indie. That first half is real strong comedy of errors, then Josh Brolin’s bi (but married to fellow ATF agent Richard Jenkins, who’s phenomenal) old friend starts hitting… 📖
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The Return of the Vampire (1944, Lew Landers)
The Universal monster movies notably ignored modern events–when World War II came around, the clocks turned back on all their European-set monster movies to some indistinguishable point. The Return of the Vampire, a Columbia cheapie, on the other hand, sets the events directly in contemporary settings, both after the First World War and during the… 📖
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The Ice Harvest (2005, Harold Ramis)
In the few reviews of The Ice Harvest I looked at before renting the DVD, the reviewers all called John Cusack’s lawyer character dumb. Watching the film, however, I noticed John Cusack was doing what he always does… playing John Cusack. So, I didn’t really see his character as stupid (I was trying to read… 📖
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Penn & Teller Get Killed (1989, Arthur Penn)
I really wish I knew what Arthur Penn was doing directing (and producing) this film. I suppose it’s a follow-up of sorts to Alice’s Restaurant or something. Penn did some great stuff in the 1970s, so seeing him doing a fill-in job (anyone could have directed this film) is kind of strange. Maybe he really… 📖
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Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train (1988, Bob Ellis)
Tedious. Tedious is a good word for Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train. The polite way of saying tedious is deliberate–as in, the filmmakers very surely lay it out, taking their time and making sure they get it right. After fifty minutes of Warm Nights–it’s a ninety-minute film–I finally realized what was so damn… 📖
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Quick Change (1990, Howard Franklin and Bill Murray)
Having seen Bill Murray capital-a act for so long–it’s been ten years now, hasn’t it?–seeing him do Quick Change is a little disconcerting. At times, he’s so mellow, he almost isn’t there. I’ve seen Quick Change five or six times–the first being in the theater at the age of eleven–so I can’t remember if there… 📖