WOMEN SCORNED

There's a terrific and deeply necessary movie that could have been made out of the basic DNA of The Other Woman. It is, for starters, basically a platonic rom-com about how a pair of mismatched women come to rely on each other as friends, and cinematic depictions of female friendships are achingly rare (contra the general buzz, the film manages to meagerly pass the Bechdel Test - two named women have a conversation that's not about a man - though...

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MAY 2014 MOVIE PREVIEW

It seems disingenuous to talk about the start of traditional blockbuster season when what's likely to end up the year's biggest superhero movie is already going strong, but that's the giddy world we live in today. So anyway, here's the kick-off to one of the more peculiarly quiet-looking summers we've had in a long while.2.5.2014Having already showed up in most of the world, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hits the States. And if you know anybody who's excited about that fact, you're one up on me. Whatever fans The Amazing Spider-Man was able to gin up...

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HOLLYWOOD CENTURY, 1927: In which we ain't heard nothing yet

1927 is perhaps the single most important year to date in the development of the film medium. It is the year when first the Hollywood continuity system and subsequently the cinema of the entire world was at a turning point between two paths, that of pure image, or that of image combined with sound. The latter of these does not inherently suggest a greater level of realism, though in practice it has nearly always been the case that sound is used to...

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STANLEY KUBRICK: A LOVELY, LILTING, LYRICAL NAME

"How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?" screamed the breathless, wink-wink ad campaign in 1962. And this question was obviously meant to ask: how did they ever make a movie, under the moral auspices of the American film industry at that time, based on the 1952 novel about a middle-aged literary scholar and his systematic rape of a 12-year-old girl? For while that kind of story would at all points in film history have been tricky to present on...

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REVIEW ALL MONSTERS! - MONSTERS, MONSTERS EVERYWHERE

Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack. Far and away the wordiest, clumsiest English-language title of any Godzilla movie - any Toho daikaiju eiga at all, for that matter. But simply a direct translation of the Japanese, and if you look at some of the original names for the classic movies in the franchise, they're no less bogged down in syllables that look more and more fake the longer you study them. Custom holds that the...

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In which the blogger is in a state of repose

Let me tell you what the all-time biggest pile of bullshit is ever: food poisoning.My current hope is for posting to resume tomorrow. In the meanwhile, you know you're sick when watching a Godzilla movie sounds like too much physical work.Update, 4/22: Well, food poisoning sure turned out to be a wildly optimistic self-diagnosis. New plan: the blogger, lighter by the weight of one gall bladder, expects to be back to business as usual tonight. Or definitely for sure tomorrow.Thanks everyone who's chimed in with best wishes for my health!Final update,...

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HOLLYWOOD CENTURY, 1926: In which sex is sexier with a smoldering Swede

The title card of Flesh and the Devil trumpets itself as a vehicle for John Gilbert, king of the romantic leading men at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (and even just a couple of years into its formal existence, the lavish MGM was not going to cut corners on its romantic leads), leaving the pair of recent Swedish imports Greta Garbo and Lars Hanson relegated to merely "with" status below the title. But anybody watching the film can tell in an instant that it's...

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WHO'S THE DEADLIEST ONE OF ALL?

Nearly until the end, and I literally mean, like, up until the last four minutes, Oculus makes a great argument for itself as being the best mainstream horror film since... I guess "since The Conjuring" isn't really at all impressive. But the spirit of my point is clear, yes? It has all the stuff to be a great horror film and it ends up being a very good horror film with some intensely dubious ideas about how to wrap up all of its clever themes and...

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HOLLYWOOD CENTURY, 1925: In which the most generous and humane filmmaker of an era finds tenderness and wit in the wilderness

At the time it was still new, Charles Chaplin called The Gold Rush, from 1925, the film he wanted to be remembered for. He's gotten his wish, and then some - we still remember The Gold Rush along with City Lights, Modern Times, The Kid, The Circus, and so on, and will undoubtedly do so as long as there is cinema.And yet The Gold Rush is still something special. I do not believe that it's anything like the consensus pick for his best film - on the...

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FLIPPING THE BIRD

What I love about animation is its capacity for creating things that you did not realise could exist. Even in the days of just about every "live" action movie with any kind of budget behind it half existing in computers full of invented locations, something about the medium of animation purchases the right to go deeper into unreality and totally new worlds to evoke brand new experiences for the viewer. For example, here's something that just happened...

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REVIEW ALL MONSTERS! - GODZILLA BUGS OUT

We now arrive at an exciting moment, for me personally: starting with 2000's Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, the series wraps up with a run of five movies which I've never seen and about which I know basically nothing. In the most extreme cases (Megaguirus is one of these), my knowledge extends literally only to having seen still images of the Godzilla suit. Comparatively, I'd seen more than half of the 24 preceding films, and I had some sense of the content...

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