Sooooooooo if you recall I had a few things to say regarding The Planet of the Apes series from a previous article. Well, as it so happens I realized the other day that I had to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes for sheer completeness’s sake. So I saw it. Rise of the [...]
One of the most inflammatory movie titles one can utter has got to be Song of the South (1946). Am I racist for liking this movie? Some people might think so. I concede that Song of the South is not Roots (1977) nor is it Amistad (1997), but it’s sensibilities are far less prejudiced than [...]
Simplicity still works. Michael Winterbottom has reminded us that sometimes comedies work best when they are slight and intimate. His naturalistic approach to filming two funny men talking at various restaurant tables is a refreshing bit of British humor. The Trip (2010), directed by Winterbottom and starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon is a much [...]
Spencer Tracy is one of those actors who no matter what, always manages to remain consistently entertaining, powerful, and strangely understated. Many of his performances were quiet and earnest, yet one might always suspect that there rested a stern bite beneath the surface. His later work in such films as the Scopes Monkey trial courtroom [...]
There is a new storm brewing on the horizon. Ever so ominously does it gather wind. The dark spectral clouds spread their terrible girth to blot out both sun and hope. Its power will be both awesome and inexplicable…to some. Has cinematic ineptitude triumphed once again? Yes. Yes, it has. James Nguyen’s Birdemic: Shock and [...]
Legendary Japanese filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa, has given us many cinematic gifts over the course of his illustrious career. From opening the doorway for other Asian films to American audiences with Rashomon (1950) to the epic to end all epics with Seven Samurai (1954), Kurosawa’s films, big and small are always a treat. From the twenty [...]
Dada? Surrealism? Avant-garde? Cinematic abstraction? Wanton pretentiosity? Experimental film is at least as old as film itself. All of the first films were by very nature “experimental.” People were experimenting with what the medium could do. Once a reasonable grasp on that was attained, experimental film came to mean something else. An experimental film came [...]
