13 Assassins falls into a category of films woefully burdened by an inescapable family resemblance that dogs their existence on one level or another. In the case of the latest offering from Japanese shock filmmaker, Takashi Miike, anyone who’s heard of Kurosawa can trace the film’s lineage back to 1954, the release year of the … Continue reading →
I don’t know if “live-action anime sci-fi operatic drama” can be considered a genre of its own, but assuming it is a thing, then 2004’s Casshern could well be considered the Citizen Kane of films bearing the same aesthetics and sensibilities. Whether or not that has any meaning whatsoever is up to you, but what’s … Continue reading →
Let’s kick this review off with a digression: I didn’t hate 2009’s Watchmen, per se, though I found it to be a massive failure that failed to truly honor Alan Moore’s essential 1987 graphic novel deconstruction of the superhero archetype which shamelessly* embraced application of style over the nurturing of substance. Zack Snyder, a director … Continue reading →
It’s that time of year (hey, at least it’s closer to that time of year than I was last January)– time for me to pontificate about which films released in 2010 tickled my fancy enough to be worthy of placement on my top ten list. I had a rough time with this year, personally; I’m … Continue reading →
“Democracy is messy.” After 2009’s critical darling (and one of my top ten of the year) The Hurt Locker made such a splash at the Oscars, Paul Greengrass sends us back to the Middle East with Green Zone, his adaptation of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s non-fiction novel Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Traveling along with him, … Continue reading →
Guy Ritchie, the proud creator of notoriously stylized gangster films like Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, is not a director well known for his relationship with the concept of “restraint”. So the fact that my fingers are about to type the sentence, “Ritchie shows uncharacteristic restraint in his latest film,” comes as … Continue reading →
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