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Colombiana (2011)
Revenge is beautiful.
Filmmaker(s): Olivier Megaton

After witnessing her parents’ murder as a child in Bogota, Cataleya Restrepo grows up to be a stone-cold assassin. She works for her uncle as a hitman by day, but her personal time is spent engaging in vigilante murders that she hopes will lead her to her ultimate target: the mobster responsible for her parents' death.

Episodes of Death Long form is so hard that most films will do anything to get out of it. A standard escape is to have three acts that the viewer will accept as belonging together. Each of these can then be a small story by...
Published February 9, 2024
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Valhalla Rising (2009)
Filmmaker(s): Nicolas Winding Refn

Scandinavia, 1,000 AD. For years, One Eye, a mute warrior of supernatural strength, has been held prisoner by the Norse chieftain Barde. Aided by Are, a boy slave, One Eye slays his captor and together he and Are escape, beginning a journey into the heart of darkness. On their flight, One Eye and Are board a Viking vessel, but the ship is soon engulfed by an endless fog that clears only as the crew sights an unknown land. As the new world reveals its secrets and the Vikings confront their terrible and bloody fate, One Eye discovers his true self.

Teen Dorm Room Posters I recently saw ‘Drive‘ and it puzzled me a bit. It was more effective filmmaking than I was prepared for, and at the same time had less to deliver that I require. The puzzle was why had I not encountered this...
Published February 9, 2024
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Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
When patriots become heroes
Filmmaker(s): Joe Johnston

During World War II, Steve Rogers is a sickly man from Brooklyn who's transformed into super-soldier Captain America to aid in the war effort. Rogers must stop the Red Skull – Adolf Hitler's ruthless head of weaponry, and the leader of an organization that intends to use a mysterious device of untold powers for world domination.

Shifting Interiors It just doesn’t make any sense to me, how consistently bad Marvel‘s films are. Perhaps someone who loves the comics can be transported out of the movie into some well established fantasy world. In that case, all you need are a few cues....
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,...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Published February 9, 2024
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