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Shadows in Paradise (1986)
Filmmaker(s): Aki Kaurismäki

Nikander, a rubbish collector and would-be entrepreneur, finds his plans for success dashed when his business associate dies. One evening, he meets Ilona, a down-on-her-luck cashier, in a local supermarket. Falteringly, a bond begins to develop between them.

Foreground, Hinted Background I am attracted to ambitious films, ones that challenge and that have a lot of powerful layered machinery. It is how I build my life. They are work. Art is work if you intend to collect and use it as fuel. So when you...


Published February 9, 2024
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The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
Horror has a face.
Filmmaker(s): Roger Corman

A European prince terrorizes the local peasantry while using his castle as a refuge against the "Red Death" plague that stalks the land.

Reds, Tarot To Roger Corman, this was simply another garish, cheaply made horror film, after the model of his previous Vincent Price successes. But for the rest of us, it tipped the world into a strange world of mystical influence. The script is simple enough, merging...


Published February 9, 2024
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Dirty Love (2005)
got dumped?
Filmmaker(s): John Asher

The klutzy yet stunning Rebecca Sommers walks in on her hunky boyfriend in bed with another woman. They break up and Rebecca starts to fall apart, but, with the help of her close girlfriends, she begins to date again. Unfortunately, the men she meets all happen to be crazy. John, her dorky guy friend, tries to express his secret love for Rebecca, but she's too busy to notice as she tries to come to terms with her breakup.

Ventriloquism for Dummies What an entertaining movie! I share the critical consensus, that it is poorly made and a failure in all its intended dimensions. But I watch movies a different way, and that allows me to get a lot out of it. In this case, it...


Published February 9, 2024
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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
The game is afoot.
Filmmaker(s): Guy Ritchie

There is a new criminal mastermind at large (Professor Moriarty) and not only is he Holmes’ intellectual equal, but his capacity for evil and lack of conscience may give him an advantage over the detective.

Intermediaries This is a new genre, I think. You go to it not so much for what it is, but what it points to, and what filters have been applied. Perhaps the genre was cemented with the Depp Pirate movies which had noise and story, but...


Published February 9, 2024
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Red State (2011)
Fear God.
Filmmaker(s): Kevin Smith

Set in Middle America, a group of teens receive an online invitation for sex, though they soon encounter Christian fundamentalists with a much more sinister agenda.

State Shifting Suppose you are a filmmaker with one skill only. You know it; you have milked it as much as you can and want to grow. Kevin Smith has one talent only: to create and effectively present a world that is a bit different. The difference...


Published February 9, 2024
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Gamer (2009)
In the near future, you don't live to play... you'll play to live.

Mind-control technology has taken society by a storm, a multiplayer on-line game called "Slayers" allows players to control human prisoners in mass-scale. Simon controls Kable, the online champion of the game. Kable's ultimate challenge becomes regaining his identity and independence by defeating the game's mastermind.

Controlled Iris The story is that insipid kind made fun of even by Robert Rodriguez. The characters are not worthy of the concept. But never mind that. What interests me in these projects is how the cinematic vocabulary is pushed, and how we adapt our ways of...


Published February 9, 2024
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Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
The invasion we always feared. An enemy we never expected.
Filmmaker(s): Michael Bay

The Autobots continue to work for NEST, now no longer in secret. But after discovering a strange artifact during a mission in Chernobyl, it becomes apparent to Optimus Prime that the United States government has been less than forthright with them.

Panopticon Defects Sometimes you simply get proved wrong. I was wrong and I admit it. When I saw the first Transformers movie, I thought I was seeing something that advanced the cinematic vocabulary. The movie was still otherwise worthless, and the advance was in the service of...


Published February 9, 2024
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Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
No plan. No backup. No choice.
Filmmaker(s): Brad Bird

Ethan Hunt and his team are racing against time to track down a dangerous terrorist named Hendricks, who has gained access to Russian nuclear launch codes and is planning a strike on the United States. An attempt to stop him ends in an explosion causing severe destruction to the Kremlin and the IMF to be implicated in the bombing, forcing the President to disavow them. No longer being aided by the government, Ethan and his team chase Hendricks around the globe, although they might still be too late to stop a disaster.

The Unused Helo I saw this close to seeing the third Transformer movie, and the lessons are clear. That other film was unconstrained, had no coherence other than the external reference to the world order established by the toy manufacturer. This film in contrast is shaped, pruned...


Published February 9, 2024
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Deep Water (2006)

DEEP WATER is the stunning true story of the fateful voyage of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur yachtsman who enters the most daring nautical challenge ever – the very first solo, non-stop, round-the-world boat race.

Magellenic Trim There are the things you do and things you do not, the line between describing a life. Ideally at the end you will have drawn something beautiful. Superficially, this is one superb documentary. It is really well put together and by grace has enough original...


Published February 9, 2024
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Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
First Contact. Last Stand.
Filmmaker(s): Jon Favreau

A stranger stumbles into the desert town of Absolution with no memory of his past and a futuristic shackle around his wrist. With the help of mysterious beauty Ella and the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde, he finds himself leading an unlikely posse of cowboys, outlaws, and Apache warriors against a common enemy from beyond this world in an epic showdown for survival.

Golden Womb I’ll let others talk about the nature of the disaster here. There are so many disintegrated narrative chunks in this stew that you are forced to grab onto one. The one that fascinates me is what ‘the girl‘ is all about. In the sort of...


Published February 9, 2024
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