Category: Film Focus
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31 Nights, 31 Frights: The Crazies
Superior to George A. Romero’s rather sloppy original, Breck Eisner’s follow-up to his underappreciated Sahara is a sharply edited, briskly paced fright that has its protagonists on the run for the duration of the film. As with Romero’s … of the Dead movies, this could easily serve as a parable of war, with strange, anonymous… Read more
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31 Nights, 31 Frights: Alien
The timeless classic that effectively launched Ridley Scott’s career. Deservedly so. What starts as a quasi-ghost story eventually turns all-out monster movie, but sophomore director Scott is in no hurry to get there. The movie unfolds in layers, each one revealing and adding to the suspense. Scott paces the film in rhythmic ebbs and truly… Read more
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31 Nights, 31 Frights: The Exorcist III
I was never a fan of the original Exorcist. Bereft of any real terror, it instead opted for high-octane shocks, predicated mostly on the concept of a fourteen-year-old actress displaying hideously vulgar behavior. The less said about its even more absurd follow-up the better. Part three is the only one in the series worth noting. Read more
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31 Nights, 31 Frights: Night of the Living Dead
Few living director’s can lay claim to inventing a movie genre, but that’s just what George A. Romero did with this unsettlingly lurid social commentary. Confining the action to a few rooms in an abandoned farmhouse, Romero creates a siege mentality meant to emulate the struggle in Vietnam at the time. Read more
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31 Nights, 31 Frights: Scream
Following on the heels of his very-meta New Nightmare, horror veteran Wes Craven serves up a reflexive revival of the diluted and nigh-dead slasher subgenre. With Scream, he reinvigorated the conventions of horror even as he simultaneously skewered and savored them. Read more
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The Disquiet Man
In counterpoint to the sound and fury that signals summer’s end, Dutch director Anton Corbijn serves up a quiet meditation on the loneliness of vocational murder in The American. If The Expendables is a callback to 1980s muscle-man pics, and Machete a throwback to 1970s exploitation flicks, The American is a think-back, recollecting cold-war thrillers… Read more
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Everything old…
Never let it be said that Sylvester Stallone doesn’t know his audience. After railing against the ascent of what he calls “velcro muscles” that he claims have defined action movie stars in the last two decades, Stallone resurrects the big-muscle action movie with his 1980s throwback, The Expendables. Not since Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Predator has this… Read more
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How Acronyms Ruin Movies (HARM)
You can blame the Internet. You can blame cell phone texting. You can blame email. Thanks a lot, king of the world I blame James Cameron. Once upon a time, Mr. Cameron made a little film called Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which, to my recollection, did reasonably well for its day. The marketing behind the… Read more
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Snake Plissken slithers again.
Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Sahara helmer and former Disney CEO offspring Breck Eisner is in negotiations with New Line Cinema to direct the remake of John Carpenter’s low-budget Escape From New York. Read more
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What is Past is Prologue.
This month in movie history. While art in any form, be it films or books or music, is sometimes mired in the current or even the next big thing, looking back can afford a glimpse into that very present and future. So this month, I decided to take a little stroll down memory lane and… Read more