Haunted House meets Mystery meets Western I love watching these films from the early thirties. Rarely are they good in the way that I need as a modern viewer. But the story is not the one the movie directly delivers, but the larger story of movies...
In the middle of a pictorial lecture on his recent expedition to the Mongolian Desert, Dr. John Benton,the famous explorer, drinks from the water bottle on his lecture table, collapses and dies. His last words "Eternal Fire" are the only clue Chinese detective Jimmy Wong and Captain Street of the police department have to work on.
Conspiratorial Filmmaking I maintain that some very important conventions were worked out in 30s mysteries. The Charlie Chan series was instrumental in some of these, and this is the last of them. It incidentally has Charlie’s son as the detective, the first Asian playing the character. The...
A young woman turns to Holmes for protection when she's menaced by an escaped killer seeking missing treasure. However, when the woman is kidnapped, Holmes and Watson must penetrate the city's criminal underworld to find her.
Displaced Mind and Eye The form — at least as established in the Holmes stories and subsequent early detective fiction, has the reader experience things in the order the detective does. In the best, there is some tension as we know the detective is ahead of...
In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.
In Front of your Face A mystery the way they used to make them, full of clues, an onscreen detective and the expectation that the audience is working hard to make sense of everything. Near then end, they stop the film and an announcer appears to...
In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.
Loco Motives I am trying to put my finger on what I see from a few of the best Korean filmmakers. It has something to do with simultaneously seeing things more sharply than usual, with more emotional impact and at the same time having an emotional,...
A struggling and publicly disgraced Hollywood icon gets another shot at mega stardom when he is hired to star and direct an action movie in Uzbekistan.
Terminatered When you push the steroids, you do damage to your body. Your ability to have sex goes away and you get depressed. Your mental acuity suffers. These are known effects that are accepted by actors who have little to offer other than muscles. One expects...
When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction. As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.
Lens Flare I’ve put Abrams in the same category as Soderbergh and Kubrick but only as a junior member. These are directors that do all the production stuff excellently, but whose creative life is in what the camera brings. They see the film not as storyboards...
Luca and his best friend Alberto experience an unforgettable summer on the Italian Riviera. But all the fun is threatened by a deeply-held secret: they are sea monsters from another world just below the water’s surface.
Post-Lassiter Engineering Pixar/Disney finally dumped John Lassiter over his profoundly offensive behaviour. As consumers, we still pay part of our ticket for his buyout, but get the benefit of the second story team, previously suppressed by his understanding of story mechanics. Some of these are great. I...
The roguishly charming and endlessly troublesome Fletch becomes the prime suspect in a murder case while searching for a stolen art collection. The only way to prove his innocence? Find out which of the long list of suspects is the culprit - from the eccentric art dealer and a missing playboy to a crazy neighbor and Fletch’s Italian girlfriend. Crime, in fact, has never been this disorganized.
Padre For some reason, the noir detective — and the companion trope of sky — is easy to turn comedic. One of the tried and true techniques is the Nick Charles model of coolness, plus joke lines intended directly for the viewer not the on-screen companion. I...
Changed Eye I am interested in these awards, not because of who wins or why. Sure we all have our favourites, but the more we celebrate when someone we value is recognised, the more we endorse this notion of a competition. A competition in the arts? No,...
