Fiddling Around When you get something like this, you have to give allowances. No money was spent; friends did the acting. Production is brusque. What you have to look for is the intent of the writer/director/main actor. If he could have, would he have delivered a film that mattered? Well, he started with Holmes, one… Continue reading Sherlock Holmes and the Shadow Watchers (2021)
Tag: 2010s
Films released in the 2010s
Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015)
Han Shoots Last Movies can do a lot of different things for us, from giving us 90 minutes away from stress to providing a skeleton on which we build lives. The films that matter to me are these latter ones. Much of what we think of evil, nobility and love we gather from films to… Continue reading Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015)
Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Dead over Heels (2017)
Manipulating Evidence I came to this as a mystery that would be safe to watch with my 10 year old. He had done well with some others like Poirot, Holmes. I’ve taught him to be alert in narrative engagement, so he was primed to be challenged in a contest. This is a mystery in name… Continue reading Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Dead over Heels (2017)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Some Dusty Pig The first Mad Max had a few strong attractions. It was overtly Australian in a few dimensions which hit a niche of the familiar exotic. It was pure science fiction in that it abstracted our world into a future where only the tiniest fragment of what we know was carried over and… Continue reading Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
The A-Team (2010)
Architectural Plans I’m not going to denigrate what are usually called mindless summer movies, because I think there is something important here. Sure, the usual fears apply. Most people take the characters and world dynamics seriously. Yes, I know, but they would be doing that anyway. And young minds (say, younger than 30) are epigenetically… Continue reading The A-Team (2010)
Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express (2010)
Loco Motives Lawrence Olivier was an actor who delivered rewards, but acting is not storytelling and sometimes the opposite is the case. He made a well regarded Hamlet and approached it as expected; he inhabited the character and let that being drive what was presented. If only he understood confounding dynamic structure the author erected… Continue reading Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express (2010)
Reasonable Doubt (2014)
Fixing, after the Fact Here is a project for film students: take this film, a loser, and make a great movie from it. I think I would add new footage about the hidden story here (the hooker), present the thing nonlinearly, shift the narrator and the stance of at least two of them and add… Continue reading Reasonable Doubt (2014)
A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
Vehicle Porn I’m pretty sure I understand how this got funded. The franchise is pretty worn out; since the first one, we have hundreds a year of tough boys and girls who manage to flamboyantly kill a lot of bad guys. (Set aside for a moment that most of these dead aren’t crooks, but soldiers… Continue reading A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
Limitless (2011)
Constraints There are two things here to recommend. The first is that the screenplay is based on a fresh idea that springs from the kind of gangster genre typified by Snatch. I’ll characterise this as an anti-genre film because it uses that genre as a shortcut to describe the background world of violence the story… Continue reading Limitless (2011)
Life in a Day (2011)
Snail Eats Label Life in a day: The Scott brothers sponsor a film with YouTube. I suppose the idea from YouTube’s side is that ordinary people make films that are real, and that allow us to deeply share humanity… the kind of films you can find on Google’s YouTube. This film really is good, but… Continue reading Life in a Day (2011)