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My 12 for ’13: Honorable Mentions

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Darren

Over the next few days, I’ll be revealing my favourite twelve films of 2013. I suspect that it will be a slightly quirky and eccentric list – I doubt anybody but myself will agree on every choice, but I hope that encapsulates the diversity and brilliance of the year that we’ve had. Indeed, I was actually quite impressed with the quality of films that were released in 2013, from large tentpoles through to more intimate and low-key film-making.

In fact, I was so impressed that I thought I’d put together a list of brief honourable mentions of the films that didn’t quite make the cut for my top twelve films of 2013.

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: All-America, arts, Associated Press, Big 12 Conference, Byzantium, film, Filmmaking, Hobbit, Horror film, mark o'rowe, Movies, Short Films, To Kill a Mockingbird, United States | 6 Comments »

The Knight is Darkest: Appeals to Fanboy Sanity…

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate the release of The Dark Knight Rises, July is “Batman month” here at the m0vie blog. Check back daily for comics, movies and television reviews and discussion of the Caped Crusader.

Really?

I’ve honestly never understood the internet’s problem with divergent opinions. Why are people so deeply threatened by an opinion that differs from their own? Rotten Tomatoes had to shut down their commenting system after a bunch of rabid fanboys took to protesting negative reviews of The Dark Knight Rises. It’s not a new problem. It happened with the release of The Avengers as well. And The Dark Knight. It seems that internet comic book fans are extremely prone to this sort of violently obsessive behaviour. I say this as somebody familiar with comic books and somebody who really loved The Dark Knight Rises: Why?

Why is an opinion different from yours threatening to you?

The long Dark Knight of the soul…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: art, Associated Press, avengers, bane, batman, Christopher Nolan, Christy Lemire, dark knight, Dark Knight Rises, Hobbit, Marshall Fine, Movies, rotten tomatoes | 10 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Casino

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Darren

You didn’t see the scam? You didn’t see what was goin’ on?

Well, there’s no way to determine that, Sam.

Yes, there is. An infallible way! They won!

Sam explains how Las Vegas works to Ward

If you ask a bunch of people to name their favourite Scorsese film, you’ll get a bunch of different answers. Some will go for his iconic gangster tale, Goodfellas. Others will go for the superb drama of Raging Bull. Some might even opt for the unforgettable Taxi Driver. I, on the other hand, am probably the only guy in the room who is going to opt for Casino. Conventional wisdom would argue that Casino is merely a bloated and over-loaded attempt to re-tread ground Scorsese already covered in Goodfellas, but I can’t bring myself to agree with that. While Goodfellas feels like a personal tale of greed and corruption, and the implosion that inevitably followed, there’s something grander to Casino. Offering the social history of Las Vegas, the rise and fall of the mob’s empire, it feels like large-scale tragedy. There’s just such an impressively epic scale to Scorsese’s film that I can’t help but admire it.

No dice...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Associated Press, Atlantic City New Jersey, casino, fbi, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Frank Vincent, Fuck, Golden Nugget Las Vegas, goodfellas, Joe Pesci, las vegas, Las Vegas Nevada, Las Vegas Review-Journal, martin scorsese, Nevada, Online casino, ray liotta, Real estate, robert deniro, scorsese, Steve Wynn, United States, vegas, Yes (band) | 6 Comments »

Doctor Who: Night Terrors (Review)

Posted on September 3, 2011 by Darren

I’ve really liked Mark Gatiss’ contributions to Doctor Who. While not amongst the very best the series has to offer, The Unquiet Dead and The Idiot’s Lantern were both very solid monster-of-the-week episodes with clever concepts, a huge amount of energy and a sharp wit. Night Terrors shares all these attributes with those two earlier of Gatiss’ stories, but benefits from a wonderfully endearing sense of nostalgia and a very effective urban setting we really haven’t seen since the end of the Davies era.