Letterboxd — Your life in film

DISCLAIMER: This review must be read in the voice of Monsieur Calvin J. Candie. It must be read in no other way. It will not work otherwise. Try to match his panache in his speech. And then you will get the full effect.

I am a seasoned movie-watcher, and I can confirm that there is a level above bright, above talented, above loyal that a movie can aspire to. Say, one movie that just pops up in 10,000. The 'exceptional…

I pretty much hated the first 30 or 40 minutes of this, but once I got past the oppressively dour and humorless tone (the Shyamalan touch!) I ended up sort of digging the solid adventure movie here despite myself. Jaden Smith is weirdly compelling in the Archie Goodwin role, and it does have a sort of refreshingly low-key sensibility - it would be interesting to see how much it cost to make because it doesn't really have the same expansive…

When you hang a man, you better look at him.
-Jed Cooper

Hang 'Em High marked Clint Eastwood's return to Hollywood with his new found stardom thanks to Sergio Leone's Dollar Trilogy. Using the money generated by those films, Eastwood setup The Malpaso Company which co-produced this as it's first film with United Artists. Eastwood made it clear that he had bigger ambitions then acting in other people's films and wasn't wasting any time planning his future.

The directing chair…

Gee whiz, we gotta get going, Mr. President.
-Captain America

Cannon Films had so much confidence in this project that when Menahem Golan left the company in 1988 they gave him the film rights to Captain America along with control of the fledgling production company 21st Century Film Corporation as part of a severance package. Of course this transpired when expectations for comic book film adaptations were at an all time low. Cannon had just experienced producing one of the…

With his third feature, writer-director Jeff Nichols, announces himself as one of the great American directors of his generation delivering a heartfelt and evocative coming-of-age drama about love and loss. Set in the backwater estuaries of Arkansas, Mud is the story of two adolescent friends - Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) - and their relationship with the titular Mud, a drifter and fugitive washed in on the bayou tide. Discovering a kindred spirit they agree to help this…

Wow. What a film. No matter how many times I watch it I can never seem to get tired of it. Even though the Ultimate cut is 215 minutes long, I felt the same way Jon feels about time when I watch this film. Time simply flies. I have heard a lot of people say that the director’s cut is way too long, but I tend to disagree. I think the 3 hour long edition is the best way to…

Striving for gritty authenticity, David Ayer’s End of Watch attempts to capture life on the gang-riddled streets for two young LA police officers. Employing a documentary-style conceit with the two cops carrying around cameras, it provides the film with a natural vérité energy but also proves to be one of its great weaknesses. The film constantly breaks its own rules with logic-stretching camera placements that ruins the immersion and undermines its central hook. It seems odd that Ayer would employ…

I think somewhere between this film and Raiders of the Lost Ark lies a truly perfect adventure film. And I don't mean Temple of Doom (although I do say TOD is a very under-rated movie).

For everything Raiders does right, it gets a few things wrong. The entire third act, for instance, is simply dissatisfying, and cannot live up to the rest of the movie. The Last Crusade remedies this with one of the most creative and exciting climaxes to…

Guillermo Del Toro's obsession with the child's perspective is often the death blow of many films that have been produced with his name attached to it. He should stop producing them and he should start making them again because he has proven time and again that he is a fantastic storyteller and Pan's Labyrinth seems to be the film that blends together everything he values in film and stories.

This film is terrifying. Not so much because it is scary…

Sunday Morning Review!

I've been reviewing big, classic films on Sundays for a while. My choice this morning wasn't exactly a "classic" but I'm sure its bound to be a certain kind of classic sometime down the road. A cult classic if you will.

I'm of course talking about the ass kickin, blood sprayin, explosive party of stern mandibles that was Dredd. This under the radar hit from last year set fanboys pants aflame like an incendiary round because despite…