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The Dictator's Guns 1965
Boilerplate thriller from Claude Sautet during the period of his career when he was regularly pumping out scripts of the sort for other directors. Unfortunately re-teaming with my man Lino Ventura doesn’t give this comparatively slight Eurocaper the complex dynamics of their prior collaboration Classe tous risques but isolated boats are one of those movie locations (like trains or stopped elevators) which just can’t fail especially when you station some big Italian guys with guns nearby
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Identification Marks: None 1964
New Wave aimlessness patterned onto central European malaise is, not surprisingly, a perfect match! Seen some people compare this to Bresson but those long takes on the street with multiple levels of action moving from phone booths to shadows on walls feel straight out of Tati if instead of building his own model city he was forced to shoot on actual streets.
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In the Dark 2000
Super endearing no-budget Richard Laymon adaptation by DePaul University (??) students that thankfully surpasses the source material, rewriting much of the original dialogue and changing the ending for something less upbeat and more ambiguous. I'll readily admit to harboring a soft spot for any kind of broke SOV trash, but in spite of technically fitting the bill by its means, In the Dark is its own beast: inventive and creepy like a Kiyoshi Kurosawa picture yet unafraid to embrace its…
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FearDotCom 2002
Simultaneously the most 2000s horror movie while also charting its own territory somewhere totally unique—an internet-based slasher procedural trapped in an endless maze of high gothic neo-German expressionist sets. The screenplay is beyond moronic (feardotcom.com) but the film’s observations about a video-obsessed online culture fixated on spreading viral content—a culture that had yet to even come about in 2002–hit far harder today than could have been possible at the time of release. Coupled with the genuine aesthetic brilliance on display,…
