June | 2012 | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Fright Night (1985)

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Darren

I have a soft spot for the original Fight Night. It feels like an affectionate slice of pulp nostalgia, harking back to a simpler time in cinematic horror. It rejects the growth and expansion of the slasher subgenre to focus on the original celluloid monster. As a result, Fright Night offers a conventional vampire story, told in a decidedly unconventional manner. While it is occasionally just a little bit too cheesy and too dated for its own good, it’s hard not to enjoy the conscious callbacks to an older time.

Don’t cross him…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Brad Fiedel, Bram Stoker, Charlie, Chris Sarandon, colin farrell, Evil Ed, Fright Night, Horror film, Imogen Poots, Internet Movie Database, Jerry, Jerry Seinfeld (character), Peter Vincent, Stage Fright, stephen king, Tom Holland | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Take Me Home Tonight

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Darren

There’s something strangely charming about Take Me Home Tonight. I say “strangely” because I’m not blind to the movie’s many awkward flaws. I can spot the predictable plotting, the douchebag entitled protagonists and the shallow “high school crush” romance. None of these are any less conventional than the plot’s attempt to conceal saccharine romanticism with cheap lowbrow humour. I can see those problems with the film, but for some reason I think it works well in spite of them. I think the strongest aspect of Take Me Home Tonight is not the eighties setting (though that helps), but the sense that Topher Grace may have finally found his niche.

We can dance if we want to…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: art, Art of War, arts, Book of Five Rings, Chinese, Dan Fogler, Eddie Brock, film, literature, Michael Biehn, Movie, non-review review, review, Sun Tzu, SunTzu, Take Me Home Tonight, Teresa Palmer, tobey maguire, topher grace, United State, United States, Washington D.C., World Literature | Leave a comment »

Chernobyl Causes: At What Point Exploitation?

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Darren

This week sees the release of The Chernobyl Diaries, a horror film from producer Oren Peli, the filmamker who gave us the superb Paranormal Activity. However, I can’t help wonder if it is a little “too soon”for a horror based around the nuclear disaster that occurred in the Ukraine in 1986. It has been over a quarter of the century since disaster occurred, and yet I’d be lying if there wasn’t a faint sense of exploitation around the film, which sees a bunch of kids (American, naturally) touring the site of the catastrophe and uncovering all manner of unpleasantness. Still, it isn’t the only exploitation horror ever made, and I can’t help but wonder when a subject is or isn’t fair game.

Real-life horror…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Chernobyl, Chernobyl disaster, ChernobylDiaries, Horror film, jack the ripper, michael bay, Nuclear reactor, Oren Peli, paranormal activity, Prypiat, Shane Van Dyke, Ukraine, United States | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Apartment

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Darren

The Apartment is a classic romantic comedy, and deservedly so. Reuniting director Billy Wilder with actor Jack Lemmon, it’s a wonderfully dysfunctional look at life in the big city, and the compromises the people find themselves forced into. While I think the movie probably works better as a romantic drama than as a comedy – with some outstanding moments of bleakness, including a serious suicide attempt and another false alarm towards the end – Wilder and Lemmon do an exceptional job keeping the movie just light enough that the darker elements don’t overwhelm the film. It is a piece of cinematic history, and one that holds up as well today as it ever did.

The neighbours were wondering about the racket…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Academy Award, Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Apartment, Billy Wilder, film, Glengarry Glen Ross, Greyhound Lines, Jack Lemmon, Karachi, kevin spacey, Lemmon, Metro Areas, Mississippi, Movie, Natchez Mississippi, new york, New York City, non-review review, Pakistan, review, Shirley MacLaine, Social Security number, the apartment, the apartment (1960), Times Square, United States | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Coriolanus

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Darren

I’m a big fan of Shakespeare adaptations, if done right. The proper cast and crew can serve to make the Bard easily accessible to modern audiences, allowing people unfamiliar with the tragedy in question to follow along with the work remarkably easily. Ralph Fiennes has assembled such a cast and crew for his directorial debut, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. Although not universally regarded as one of the truly great Shakespearean tragedies, it does have the epic scale and grand drama of some of the writer’s best work. T.S. Elliot would consider it to be, along with Anthony and Cleopatra, to be Shakespeare’s finest tragic play. I think that Fiennes adaptation makes a plausible argument for a long overdue reappraisal of the work. At the very least, it does an excellent job bringing it to a modern audience.

Roman around…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Aufidius, brian cox, Butler, Consul, Coriolanus, Fiennes, gerard butler, James Nesbitt, Jon Snow, ralph fiennes, rome, Senate, shakespeare, Television, Tilda Swinton, Vanessa Redgrave, Volumnia, William Shakespeare | 2 Comments »

David Lynch’s Rock of Ages (Trailer)

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Darren

Occasionally I stumble across something in the wilds of the internet that I just have to share. Here is a rather interesting fan made trailer examining something all of us have wondered about: what if Rock of Ages were directed by David Lynch? Okay, maybe not all of us. But some of us. Probably. Anyway, it’s a work of bizarre brilliance, so check it out. I especially like the liberal application of Roy Orbison.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: art, Blue Velvet, David Foster Wallace, david lynch, Eraserhead, laura dern, Lynch, rock of ages, youtube | 2 Comments »

The Avengers: The Crossing Omnibus (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Darren

“One of the nineties’ most notorious narratives!”

– well, the back cover wasn’t lying

The Crossing has become a watch-word for nineties excesses. Essentially a gigantic crossover between The Avengers and the various Iron Man books (including War Machine and Force Works), it is renowned for its clumsy editorial mandate: the event was designed to replaced Tony Stark with a younger version of himself. Fans have come to reflect on The Crossing as one of the most awful comic book storylines ever concocted, an example of the mess that Marvel had made of their line of books during a decade not exactly renowned for its taste.

I know it’s fashionable to trash The Crossing, and I know that it is every bit as ridiculously nineties and forced as its editorial mandate would suggest, but I can’t help but think there are some nice ideas to be found here, if one wades in deep enough into the crap. Don’t get me wrong, there’s not nearly enough to justify the tangled bloated mess of a plot, and I’m not going to argue the consensus is wrong, but I do think the massive catastrophic failure of The Crossing was one of execution, rather than one of ideas.

Shockingly bad?

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Acts of Vengeance, Avenger, avengers, Avengers Mansion, Bob Harras, captain america, chris claremont, Edwin Jarvis, hawkeye, iron man, Jim Rhodes, joss whedon, kang, MarvelUniverse, Tony, tony stark, war machine | 12 Comments »

New Dark Knight Rises Trailer

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Darren

Man, it is taking enormous self-restraint not to look at every single one of the TV spots being released for The Dark Knight Rises. With less than a month to go, I think I’m doing quite well, limiting myself to these larger trailers. Anyway, here’s the latest two-minute look at the film. It’s more action-packed than the last couple, and it has a lot more humour. (I’ve always felt that people overplay the seriousness of Nolan’s Batman films – yes, they are quite heavy, but they don’t take themselves too seriously.) And, I feel like an idiot, but I just got that “what are you?” and “I’m Gotham’s reckoning” are a conscious call back to “what are you?” and “I am Batman” from Batman Begins. D’oh.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: bane, batman, batman begins, Christopher Nolan, Dark Knight Rises, Dark Knight Rises trailer, gotham city, Nokia, nolan, Television advertisement, trailer | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: Abraham Lincoln – Vampire Hunter

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Darren

The biggest problem with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is that it’s so mundane. You have this concept that is so incredibly ridiculous that you can play any number of ways – wacky “history-xploitation”; Hollywood “meta”-spoof; absurd parody. And yet director Timur Bekmambetov instead produces on of the most bland action movies imaginable. Despite the “wait? did the poster really say…?” premise, this film could be any action vampire movie ever. All Bekmambetov did was to swap speeding cars for horses and carriages, and cast a slightly taller lead with a badass taste in hats and facial hair. I’d argue that the problem with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is that it takes itself too seriously, but there’d be some fun in playing something like this absurdly straight. Instead, it’s just a generic action and adventure film with a slightly quirky title.

He was just clearing through his old things and… (four)score!

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, Bekmambetov, Benjamin Walker, dominic cooper, film, hollywood, Jefferson Davis, liam neeson, Lincoln, Movie, non-review review, Oval Office, review, Rufus Sewell, Seth Grahame-Smith, tim burton, Timur Bekmambetov | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Darren

Back in its heyday, Hammer Horror had a reputation as an assembly-line studio, churning out cheesy exploitation horror after cheesy exploitation horror with an efficiency that would make battery farmers jealous. I won’t pretend that the reputation is entirely undeserved, although I do have a certain fondness for the delightful schlock the studio would produce. Still, I think that this reputation tends to overshadow the occasional gem that the studio would produce, something that managed to transcend the cost-effective scenery and cookie-cutter approach to film-making. While it probably isn’t the definitive adaptation of the tale, Hammer’s The Hound of the Baskervilles is still an absolute delight for gothic horror aficionados.