‘Drag Me to Hell’ has expert touches (the handkerchief/car bit) but Raimi mostly revels in fun, repulsive, throwaway visual/aural aggression
Should we consider Spike Jonze’s and Dave Eggers’ adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are a disappointment? It is certainly not a miserable failure. It received good reviews, won the box office when it debuted, and also topped the Box Office Power Rankings in its opening weekend. But its gross dropped 57 percent its second weekend. Thirty-five movies have opened in wide release atop the box-office top 10 this year, and 20 lost a lower percentage of revenue than Wild Things.
Instead of generating yet another list of 20 or 50 or 100 great horror movies for Halloween-viewing consideration, I tried to approach the task a little differently. My original plan was to present many movies in various horror subgenres with different labels (“under the radar,” “fashionable but worthy,” “classic,” and “could do without”), but I realized I was mostly repeating myself. So instead, I offer one movie in each of 10 horror divisions, with some effort to avoid the obvious, everybody’s-seen-them choices. A director can only appear once on the list.
Stripping the vampire flick of baroque affectations, del Toro’s ‘Cronos’ is simple but rich, concerned with addiction, corruption, and aging
Over the past seven weekends, Culture Snob’s Box Office Power Rankings were won by Quentin Tarantino (twice), Tyler Perry, Meatballs (twice), and zombies (twice). No one could have possibly known that until now, however, because apparently I’ve been in a coma.
While I still don’t really understand the Twitter phenomenon, I’ve loved using the 140-character limit for extreme forced concision. The aim is always to pack these ridiculously short reviews with enough meaning that I don’t feel guilty about never writing more about a particular movie or television show. I would never say that 140 characters is sufficient to discuss much of anything – let alone a feature film – but it’s a great if arbitrary writing exercise: How much can you say within Twitter’s confines? For the most part, I’ve been happy with the results. But with Tell No One, I feel that I need to explain myself.
‘Duplicity’ revels in triviality. Corporate intrigue in movies is serious business, but here everything is light, and romance fits right in.
Zombie’s ‘Halloween’ purveys trite backstory, poorly mimics iconic moments, and jacks up the T&A, but it finds in its final moments a voice.
Teasing with odd, existential potential, the tight French thriller ‘Tell No One’ sadly picks a worn, logical path. A lovely ending, though.
‘Flight of the Conchords S2’ shows what happens when your great ideas got used up the first time. Often amusing but random and kinda stupid.
