Tag Archive
The 5 minute feature film, volume 2: This World, Then the Fireworks
Here is volume 2 of the 5 Minute Feature Film series, this time on Michael Oblowitz’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s This World, Then the Fireworks. The 5 Minute Feature Film series is where I take a full length movie and cut it down to 5 minutes in length, re-score it, but tell basically the same […]
This World, Then the Fireworks
When you watch a movie, is there always a giveaway about how intentional a level of incompetence is? What I mean is, at what point does the appearance of satire or parody drift off into the area of just plain old dreadful? Unless you were in the director’s brain while he was on set, there’s […]
Unstoppable
If you tend to dislike a filmmaker’s work, if he puts less effort into doing those things that annoy you, either because he can’t afford to or is unable to, does that mean you’ve learned to enjoy his films, or just that you’ve convinced yourself that he’s suddenly tolerable? With Tony Scott, who made Top […]
Ninja Assassin
The big-budget version of an exploitation movie is fool’s gold. Sure, the filmmaker who could have used some more money to make his action sequences more convincing or get more than one take of any given shot is a worthy cause. But there’s scrappy charm in low-budget films and you forgive the mistakes as part […]
The 18 1/2 Philadelphia Film Festival’s opening night film: Law Abiding Citizen
As I said in my review of Year One, sometimes the way an actor or a director chooses to promote his new film on a talk show reveals all you need to know about the movie itself. Jamie Foxx, the star of F. Gary Gray’s new thriller Law Abiding Citizen, amidst the two segments (11 […]
The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)
Over the past few years, director Tony Scott (Top Gun, True Romance, Enemy of the State) has been taking shots from the press over his recent fascination with film school tricks like flash frames, jump cuts, color filtering and his insistence on somehow cutting his films even faster than he used to. Whether this is […]