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Mud 2013
A great and unique coming-of-age drama. Manages to deliver its message without getting preachy or on-the-nose. As typical of Jeff Nichols's films, it looks fantastic, sounds just as good, the acting is flawless, and the script is just magnificent.
Not as great as TAKE SHELTER, but what the fuck is?
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Beowulf 2007
Stellar animation. Not only in the movement of the characters and the rendering and texturing of the environments, but also (very importantly) in the movement of the camera. Almost every shot looks like it could be performed practically with the equipment we have available in reality. This familiar camera style is absolutely essential for keeping people in tune with the story. When I see obviously phony CGI camerawork in films, it takes me out of the experience immediately with how out of place and downright fucking terrible it looks. Not here. And for a fully CGI movie, that's quite a feat.
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Mission: Impossible II 2000
Compare how numerous, exciting, and creative the action set-pieces are in Ghost Protocol to those in this film. You will see there really is no comparison. Ghost Protocol is incredibly imaginative, and the set-pieces are stacked on top of one another to ensure the film is consistently entertaining.
This film has...maybe one interesting set-piece, and that's it. The rest is just gunfights and kickboxing (gunfights in a sequel to a film in which the hero did not use a gun…
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Killer Joe 2012
This could have been a truly great film if it had some kind of destination. The climax is just not satisfactory. It feels as if Letts didn't know what to do, so he typed FADE OUT and said "fuck it."
Everything before then is great, but it's incredibly disheartening to see major conflicts dissolved or forgotten about for no good reason. If only this movie had a conclusion that built up from the narrative and had a bit more focus.…
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The Spy Who Loved Me 1977
One word to sum up this movie: creativity.
While this film does absolutely nothing new with the Bond formula, it's still entertaining from beginning to end because everything is creative. After viewing some of the Brosnan films and coming away relatively disappointed, it was extremely refreshing to see great care in set design, location scouting, henchmen, action set pieces, vehicles, stunts (the ski jump is fantastic), and in pretty much everything else.
The villain is essentially Dr. No all over…
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A Canterbury Tale 1944
Couldn't get into this very much at all. Sorry, Archers.
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Tomorrow Never Dies 1997
Probably the most Connery-esque of the Brosnan films, but mostly in terms of plot and overall structure. Brosnan himself is nothing like Connery, and that leads to several significant issues with the film.
As much as I enjoy the gadgets and gunfights, this movie relies far too heavily on gadgets and gunfights. The entire third act is almost nothing but people shooting one another. I enjoyed some of the creativity with the motorcycle in the second act, but with that…
