Jump! I am an admirer of this filmmaker, and he does better when he gets closer to a single soul or small collection of them. But for large projects he seems to be able to understand how to group extras and their CG equivalent for visual music. But here it seems that he got into… Continue reading The Great Wall (2016)
Category: Twos
Films rated two stars out of three
Fatty’s Spooning Days (1915)
Wife-swapping As a comedy, this one is poor in the things that seemed to matter, the physical bits, the comic takes when the situation turns sour. But its amazing in what it chooses as its story. Remember, film was young, younger in those days that the web is now. It was still experimenting and the… Continue reading Fatty’s Spooning Days (1915)
iMurders (2008)
Kernel Panic You know what? This is pretty incompetent in a few ways, but the incompetence works for it. This is a murder mystery of the old school. You are introduced to characters. Murders are being committed. Clues are placed around. Many suspects and many motives are given. There is a chatroom angle, but that… Continue reading iMurders (2008)
Inside Man (2006)
Inside Out I want to like Spike, I really do. He has a natural cinematic imagination, something you can see from the very beginning. And he is flamboyant with the camera which I appreciate when the confidence is rewarded. Plus other things. He seems to have backed off his “I’m not an Oscar-winner because I’m… Continue reading Inside Man (2006)
Okja (2017)
All Rind I differentiate between storyteller/filmmakers and the story itself. It isn’t such a clean break as this of course; the narrative contract inveigles. But the distinction is useful here. He has a scope that he is interested in which could be described as: navigating the pull against a world that presents as capricious evil.… Continue reading Okja (2017)
Alibi Mark (1937)
Signs of Trauma, Film as Meal Wow, what a strange film. My interest in these comments is in the qualities of introspection: where the viewer is placed in the narrative and how different layers of that stance are manipulated. The CCC, as duly described in this film, was a sort of civilian army designed to… Continue reading Alibi Mark (1937)
The Equalizer (2014)
Tattoo Signals Standard fare: good guy is endowed with superhuman killing capability, presumably used in the past for what the Agency thought was good. In simple retirement, he is drawn by his sheer goodness into massive, efficient elimination of the bad guys. There isn’t much else to this. What’s interesting here are three stereotypes that… Continue reading The Equalizer (2014)
Mifune The Last Samurai (2015)
Cut Vision is the strangest thing. If we see too much of something we believe it less. Stories are like this; the things that are left out can carry the agency more powerfully, and often the missing is referenced by the obvious. I like filmmakers that understand this. Scorsese is all about the lead actor.… Continue reading Mifune The Last Samurai (2015)
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
The Game I’ve enjoyed the series in spite of itself. When it started, it had three things going for it: a general stylishness, some original fight choreography, and a novel world’s cosmology. The first two have since been bested, including films with Keanu. We still have the cosmology, the world. That’s what you build your… Continue reading The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Double Indemnity (1944)
The Match is Out Filmviewing is like most things in life: there are a few predefined roles among which it is convenient to pick. Once you define who you are in the world of cinema, it determines a lot of what you think about what you have just experienced. One of these roles is the… Continue reading Double Indemnity (1944)