AUGUST 2013 MOVIE PREVIEW

This has been a completely grueling summer, right? I'm not just being an unpleasable grouch? Because it feels like no matter how much I lower my expectations, they still end up being too high. Anyway, it's all going to over soon, and we can start looking forward to the at least potentially exciting movies of September and even more October, which is both so close and so far away...2.8.2013There's nothing about the "antagonistic buddy cops" genre that can possibly still be exciting or surprising at this point, but it's also an unusually reliable...

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BANGKOK DANGEROUS

I beg your pardon, but Only God Forgives is complete bullshit. I'd like there to be a more intellectually suitable way to put my feelings than that, but I'd also like it if Only God Forgives wasn't such an artistically denuded, pointless waste of time and talent.That's what's awful about it, really: this is a movie that was not made by incompetents. Writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn is every bit as much in control of his art as he was making Drive,...

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SUMMER OF BLOOD: I LOVE ROCK AND ROLL

The byword of the Canadian Summer of Blood has been that there's Just Something Special about Canadian horror filmmakers: even when their films are no "better" than the analogous United States productions, there's some kind of increased sense of maturity and intelligence. That is, they are frequently shitty-ass slashers and all, but they are shitty-ass slashers involving somewhat more grown-up characters and vaguely real-world situations.Rock 'n'...

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BLOCKBUSTER HISTORY: WHITE PEOPLE FINDING THEMSELVES IN JAPAN

Every week this summer, we'll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend's wide releases. This week: the year's third superhero movie, and the last of the summer, The Wolverine finds the title character traveling to Japan to face down his demons and understand himself again. This has a tendency to happen, though it seems, oddly, to only infrequently...

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TONY SCOTT: THE FAN (1996)

With The Fan, we arrive at a very curious question that isn't really as interesting as I probably think it is: can a performance be too good for a movie?The reason I ask this is because The Fan pairs the slick manipulations of a Tony Scott-directed thriller with the Method acting of Robert De Niro, and I frankly don't think that the movie survives it. There's something unmistakably crude and trashy about the plot, in the manner of a beach potboiler;...

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SLOW DOWN, YOU MOVE TOO FAST

2013 has been a remarkably mediocre year for American animated features, but even in the company of Monsters University and Despicable Me 2, there's something special about Turbo, the second and final DreamWorks Animation project of the year (following The Croods, which is starting to look like an elder statesman). It is mediocre; unabashedly so. But it's more than just that; it is aggressive, poisonous in its mediocrity, not just denuded of imagination...

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TIM AT TFE: MY KIND OF TOWN

This week's essay: in honor of Film Experience founder and editor Nathaniel R visiting Chicago this weekend, a brief tour of movies that best capture the feeling of the city that I love above all othe...

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DISNEY SEQUELS: IN THE TINKLING OF AN EYE

Inasmuch as it's possible to feel sorry for a movie, I do feel sorry for Pixie Hollow Games. Originally pitched to be the fifth and last of the Disney Fairies features, with a release in 2012, it ended up being swapped with what was then being called Tinker Bell and the Mysterious Winter Woods, sliced to a third or less of its running time, and released as a 22-minute special that premiered on the Disney Channel in November, 2011.I feel absolutely...

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SUMMER OF BLOOD: ROLLING A NATURAL 1

I'm going to name a game, and I want you to think for a moment about the person who plays it.Dungeons & Dragons.I guarantee, with 99% confidence, that you're thinking of a stereotypical nerd. There is literally one reason for you to be thinking of anyone else, which is because you're a D&D player yourself. I do not claim this is an accurate perception, or fair: that's just how it is. We live in an age where "geek chic" is a thing, where knowledge...

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TONY SCOTT: CRIMSON TIDE (1995)

To me, Crimson Tide has the feeling of being a homecoming of sorts for director Tony Scott: in large part because it returned him to the comforting bosom of producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, five years after Days of Thunder. There are plenty of just fine movies that Scott made without those producers; there are plenty of just fine movies those producers made without him. But their aesthetic mentalities just fit together so nicely - much...

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THINGS THAT GO CLAP IN THE NIGHT

Inevitably, "the first movie ever rated R just because it's so damn scary" creates expectations that cannot be met, not by The Conjuring, probably not by anything. In fact - allowing that "scary" is the only thing even more personal and subjective than "funny" - I don't even suppose that The Conjuring is the scariest movie about demonic possession directed by James Wan; I was certainly freaked out more by his PG-13 Insidious, anyway. So now that...

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BLOCKBUSTER HISTORY: THE DEVIL'S WORK

Every week this summer, we'll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend's wide releases. This week: ghosts in a haunted house, demonic possession, it's all fair game in The Conjuring, a giddy old ghost story of the best campfire tradition based on the case files of noted paranormal investigators/professional frauds Ed and Lorraine Warren. Not...

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