Tag: Film criticism
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Promare: Anime Review
This past week I saw the theatrical release of the first film from Studio Trigger – Promare. Here are my thoughts.
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Film Review: Touch of Evil
Touch of Evil is considered one of the best Film Noir of all time, for a lot of reasons – from the very gritty narrative with a driving thrust based around police corruption and racism, to a protagonist being a more upstanding police detective who as the film goes on becomes more morally compromised. However,
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Film Review – His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday has aged poorly. Let’s start off with the fundamental premise – Newspaperman Walter Burns (Cary Grant) has divorced from his reporter wife Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) at some point prior to the beginning of the film. She’s stopped by the newspaper to announce that she’s remarrying, to insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin (Ralph
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Film Review: 8 1/2
Fellini’s film 8 1/2 is considered his magnum opus, the defining film of his career, and a monumental work of Italian cinema. It’s also a film that, in my view, has been eclipsed by later works influenced by it, in particular Bob Fosse’s film All That Jazz. I’ll explain. (There will be some spoilers for both
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Legends of the Force: Episode XV – The Last Jedi Vlog
There’s a new Star Wars movie – I take a look at it and (while avoiding spoilers for the rest of the film), takes a look at Luke’s teaching style in this movie. Opening Credits: Star Wars Theme from Super Star Wars on the SNES. Closing Credits: Chiptune Cantina Band from Chiptune Inc. Please support
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Film Review: Stalker (1979)
A while back I reviewed Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic science fiction film Solaris. However, of the various films in Tarkovsky’s filmography, while Solaris was and is extremely well regarded, it’s a film that hasn’t built quite the same following behind it as Tarkovsky’s 1979 film, Stalker. While Solaris got a highly regarded remake approaching 30 years later from
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Film Review: Extraordinary Tales
I really like anthology films – particularly when it comes to horror. Anthology films let you take a brief period of time to tell an exciting, concise story that can scare you, excite you, or creep you out. Perhaps this is due to many great horror stories being short stories. One of the masters of
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Film Review: King Kong (1933)
King Kong is a film that is widely held as a classic of cinema – with some of the iconic monster photography in cinema. It is a film whose visual effects have held up very, very well, but narratively hasn’t held up quite as much.
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Film Review: Blood and Lace (1971)
There’s a bit in an episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip where the characters on the series serial-numbers-filed-off version of Saturday Night Live are working on a sketch for Thanksgiving where the turkey spurts absurd, Army of Darkness levels of blood when carved. The bit is not shown, only talked about – with one of the
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TV Series Review: The Story of Film – An Odyssey
This time I’m doing a meta-review, a review of a critical analysis of film – “The Story of Film: An Odyssey” written and directed by Mark Cousins.
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Film Review – Fury (2014)
“$NAME_OF_FILM” on/in a “$LOCATION_OR_VEHICLE” is a pretty good reductive way to describe some films. Under Siege is Die Hard on a Battleship. The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Starship Mine” was pitched as Die Hard on the Enterprise. The Magnificent Seven is The Seven Samurai in the old west. While it’s reductive, it’s not necessarily bad, nor is
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Movie Review: Gravity
Gravity is, quite possibly, the tensest film I’ve ever seen, and is one of the most profound combinations of imagery and music (chronologically) since the Star Wars films and Koyaanisqatsi, and only eclipsed by Mad Max: Fury Road.
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Film Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, suffers the same array of problems that the Michael Bay directed Transformers films have suffered. The film takes emphasis away from the title characters of the film to put an increased focus on the human characters. To the film’s credit, it doesn’t clutter up the film with the samedegree of human
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Film Review – The Spy Who Loved Me
There is one Bond film that, before today, I had not seen: The Spy Who Loved Me. I refer to official Bond films, as opposed to parodies like the ’60s Casino Royale, or knockoffs like Never Say Never Again (which I have seen), and spiritual ripoffs like Operation Double 007 (as seen on MST3K).
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Film Review – Is Paris Burning?
This week I’m doing another film review – this time of a World War II Ensemble film – Is Paris Burning? Naturally, this includes some discussion of this sub-genre as a whole.
