Twitter Review: Thirst
It’s messy and too telegraphed, but ‘Thirst’ employs vampirism probingly, is anchored by two great performances, and is disgustingly funny.
Tagged: Chan-wook Park, Horror, Reviews, Thirst, Twitter, Twitter Reviews, Vampires
That’s More Like It
The One-Line Review’s Iain Stott has followed up his The 50 Greatest Films project with Beyond the Canon, meant to address complaints that the first survey was too canonical. The top five: Eyes Wide Shut, Mulholland Dr.,The Killing, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Shadow of a Doubt.
Twitter Review: Grace
Primally repulsive and sad, ‘Grace’ is an honest, thorough metaphor for early motherhood, and clever and light with its icky cryptic horrors
Tagged: Grace, Horror, Paul Solet, Reviews, Twitter, Twitter Reviews
Box Office Power Rankings: October 30-November 8, 2009
As people tell us time and time again, box-office performance is in the eye of the beholder. Box Office Mojo wrote that Michael Jackson’s This Is It, in its debut weekend, did “exceptionally well for a concert picture or music documentary.” On the other hand, Disney’s A Christmas Carol “stumbled a bit out of the gate.” Guess which one made $30 million and which one pulled in $23 million in its opening weekend. Yep. The stumbler made more.
Economical Storytelling in Movies: A Case Study
Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell exists mostly to remind the world that Sam Raimi made The Evil Dead and can still make The Evil Dead, which is good to know because Sam Raimi is re-making The Evil Dead. But amid all the giggle-inducing grossness are a few grace notes – unnecessarily skillful business that reminds us that Raimi also made A Simple Plan. I’m going to talk about one of those bits.
Tagged: Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi, Ways of Watching
Twitter Review: Drag Me to Hell
‘Drag Me to Hell’ has expert touches (the handkerchief/car bit) but Raimi mostly revels in fun, repulsive, throwaway visual/aural aggression
Tagged: Drag Me to Hell, Horror, Reviews, Sam Raimi, Twitter, Twitter Reviews
Box Office Power Rankings: October 16-25, 2009
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.
Monster Mash
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.
Twitter Review: Cronos
Stripping the vampire flick of baroque affectations, del Toro’s ‘Cronos’ is simple but rich, concerned with addiction, corruption, and aging
Tagged: Cronos, Guillermo del Toro, Horror, Reviews, Twitter, Twitter Reviews, Vampires
Box Office Power Rankings: August 28-October 11, 2009
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.
