Another horror movie remake! This one tries is particularly faithful to the Wes Craven original, even recreating a number of scares shot-for-shot. Not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose, but the new interpretations are pedestrian interpretations, without flair or creativity. There’s no emotional throughline in the first half; the film focuses on one character for…
The Mist is a good movie that could have been great. The first element that lets it down was inescapable with its low budget: the special effects. The film is intended to be serious, meaningful and to capture real fear, and the acting and composition support this, but the creature special effects appear goofy and…
It’s no accident that the soundtrack of many scenes throughout the 3 hour running time of Short Cuts is jazz. Jazz is improvisational music, familiar elements constructed over a backbone that shifts and changes, reflecting life’s messiness. Short Cuts is the same, weaving plot elements and character archetypes you might recognise into an immense, organic…
Shame appears to establish Brandon (Michael Fassbender) as the suave gentleman that doesn’t exist outside of fiction, unflappable and exuding preternatural confidence. We soon find that this persona is a thin shell around a damaged core, and the film the same: beginning with confident, gliding cinematography that becomes gradually more erratic, disjointed. Shame isn’t a…
The appeal of the Scream films (well, the first two – Scream 3 was an abject failure) is their diversity. Each is a slasher, a whodunit and a satirical take on the horror genre; even if they fail in one, they normally manage to be entertaining in another. Scre4m fails as a slasher film –…
The challenge of the Nightmare on Elm Street films is that they need to create fear in an environment where the normal rules don’t apply, which makes scares that would be shocking in a realistic context less effective. The second sequel answers this challenge by not trying to be a horror film; it’s more of…
The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s power stems from its verisimilitude, how it feels like a gritty documentary. The remake largely abandons any attempt at this and makes a host of baffling choices: The film seems compelled to make its leads as unlikable as possible, setting them up as crass, unsympathetic drug traffickers –…
Skyfall opens in classic Bond fashion with an extended action sequence involving countless vehicles, composed with enthralling kineticism. As an opening it’s perfect; as a representation of the film’s style it’s misleading. The next half hour or so drags, aside from some impressive visual styling, before the film reveals its true nature with the introduction…
Sam Mendes is interested in colour and light; the red door of American Beauty, the flaming oil wells of Jarhead. Skyfall is no different. The film opens with an out of focus Bond and an important early shot, viewed through a mirror, shows him disappearing into shadows (a recurring motif). The interplay of colour and…
For a self-professed “movie geek,” there’s some significant holes in my film knowledge, but the largest are certainly in the horror genre, a genre I’ve only recently embraced. One such hole is J-Horror – I’ve only seen Pulse (and thoroughly disliked it), and have yet to see the original Ringu. This means that I can…
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