The phrase ‘You can’t go home again,’ apparently came from a Thomas Wolfe novel of the same name – which is news to me and while I suspect that it was never intended to apply to movies, it works because who hasn’t recalled seeing something at an earlier point in their lives that they don’t […]
When people talk about Marvel movies, what they tend to talk about is the ‘Marvel Formula,’ which is a way of saying that they’re very consistent in terms of their plots, story beats and visual presentation. And on one level that’s fair, and on another it’s really lazy because ANY series of movies – or […]
Jacob Chase’s Come Play is a surprisingly good horror movie; ‘surprisingly’ because there’s a lot of really mediocre horror out there so movies that manage to work are worth drawing attention to. What make it such a joy for me is that any movie that makes me feel something – as long as it isn’t […]
Just like every movie isn’t Art, not every movie has resonance beyond the moment you’re sitting and watching it – whatever the intentions of the filmmakers. And that’s okay because not everything needs or should possess canyon-deep layers of subtext (and besides, there’s an argument to be made for the difficulty creating something fairly light […]
Peter ‘Drago’ Tienmann’s The Stairs starts out pretty promisingly, with Kate Martin (Trin Miller) and her son, Jesse (Thomas Wethington), on the way to visit her grandparents, Bernice and Gene (Kathleen Quinlan and John Schneider, who’s aging particularly well). Gene is taking Jesse hunting and if this were a typical movie this would be the […]
Having just watched There’s Someone Inside Your House made me realize how clever John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985) was because it managed to create a realistic scenario revolving around a group of people interacting with each other that under virtually any other circumstances would have nothing to do with each other. Someone ought to […]
Recently I watched Chad Ferrin’s H.P. Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones and it made me realize something, namely the better adaptations – or maybe those with the most notoriety – were directed by Stuart Gordon (Herbert West: Reanimator, From Beyond, Dagon, Castle Freak), none of which were particularly faithful to the material they were based on. […]
Richard LeMay’s remake of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dementia 13 Is perhaps among one of the best remakes I have seen in quite awhile. That being said, it’s not a great movie – it’s a little too soapy for my tastes – though it does what a good remake does, which is to remain faithful to […]
A few years ago I had a debate on Twitter with James Mangold (Identity, Logan, the upcoming Indiana Jones 5) about directors being artists. I said that I didn’t believe that to be the case; he took the opposite tack though after years of thought I still believe that I was right – and wrong […]
Roseanne Liang’s Shadow In The Cloud is fascinating for more than a few reasons, though what ranks really high is that despite being directed and co-written (with Max Landis, which brings more than a little bit of baggage) by a woman, it comes off as somewhat condescending towards – wait for it! – women! For […]
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