Vishniac (video review)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nsusdz2zi8
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Thriller
Poltergeist (2015)
It is very likely that the remake of Poltergeist may be impossible to enjoy on any level. If, like me, you’re a connoisseur of the original and look on it with fond memories, this retread will come off as a soulless carbon copy. If you’ve never seen Steven Spielberg’s film, then this will come off […]
Ex Machina (2015)
It is lamentably true that the age of brainy science fiction is long behind us. What was once a genre that looked at ideas and questioned the nature of human identity has been diluted into a genre that is almost exclusively nestled in the comforts of action and candy-coated visual effects. What’s left of science […]
Nightcrawler (2014)
Nightcrawler is a wickedly brilliant thriller, a social satire and an eerie look into the mind of a sociopath who can manipulate with the power of cold-blooded reason. That sounds like a tall order, but this is a deceptively simple plot made functional by a well-mounted script and a near-perfect performance by Jake Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal […]
The Equalizer (2014)
In its introductory scenes The Equalizer is not a bad movie. However, once the plot gets underway it becomes one. Here is yet another movie about a one-man arsenal hell-bent on mopping the floor with grimy hoodlums who are turning the world into a cesspool of inhuman cruelty while wallowing in blood and gore. You’ve […]
A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)
For those who treasure the great film noir thrillers of yore, A Walk Among the Tombstones seems like return to a genre that Hollywood has forgotten how to make. These days, action thrillers are unremittingly simple-minded, put together by filmmakers who are so terrified of offending moviegoers with short attention spans that every detail of the […]
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)
When it’s all over, after you’ve wallowed in the den of scum and villainy wrapped up in the spiky heart of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, you may come away with a sense of hollow indifference. That’s really surprising and achingly disappointing if you have fond memories of the original Sin City from […]
Under the Skin (2014)
Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin opens with a scene that could easily have found a home in 2001: A Space Odyssey. We’re somewhere in deep space, looking at evolving shapes that emerge from the darkness. You don’t notice it at first, but as the shapes form, a voice is quietly emerging from the soundtrack. The […]
BLOG: Bates Motel, and the rewriting of movie folklore.
“Norman Bates no longer exists. He only half-existed to begin with.” – dialogue from Psycho It is the second part that’s key. I have seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho so many times that it seems less like a movie and more like a place in my mind. Like a great piece of music, I know every […]
