Popular reviews

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★★ 4

  "Now that's a scream."

  I've seen this one countless times and though De Palma has a number of masterpieces this is the one that's always felt like it summarizes and symbolizes his entire filmography. His love of/playful use of pulp and B-movie-making (voyeur-horror, slashers, Giallo black-gloved misogynist murderers, etc), his basically plagiarized Hitchcockian visual grammar/obsession (especially in the suspense-sequencing and doomed murder-mystery/self-critical or confessional romance), the meta-angle of the love of analog craftsmanship + the filmmaker's responsibility to this powerful illusion they serve (not dissimilar from the way a cover-up functions), and of course the radical, angry political paranoia that cropped up in some of his early student and eventual war films.

  Taking his obvious inspirations (namely Blow Up and…

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  Review by Karst ★★★★★

  that’s how you do it!!!

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  Review by Patrick Willems ★★★★½ 4

  Holy shit this is a god damn movie right here

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 9

  The works of Brian De Palma are cinema's comfort food, and Blow Out is the tastiest of all. Plus, it has John Travolta, and an ending for the ages.

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  Review by Will Menaker ★★★★ 10

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  People love to talk about this movie as a movie about making movies and how it synthesizes "Blow Up" (photos) and "The Conversation" (audio) for a movie about a guy threading sound together with a moving image to create movie magic, but De Palma adds another crucial layer as this film is really about dealing with actresses, or at least how they are seen by the male director. Here, Nancy Allen is the prototypical leading lady, she gets cast in Travolta's movie, and at first he falls for her and wants to love her, but eventually he realizes she's just a dumb whore and goes from cajoling her to barking orders at her to make her hit her marks, remember her lines. Eventually, he gets her killed and moves on to make more movies, taking from her the only useful thing to him: her death rattle. Pretty dark!

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★ 5

  "I know what I heard and I saw, and I'm not gonna stop until everyone in this fucking country hears and sees the same thing."

  To believe that the above statement, as far as social repetition is concerned, is an anomaly, is probably untrue. But in America at the least, it's never worked. The moment where De Palma develops into Hollywood's preeminent political filmmaker, a total cut above his contemporaries, making a film on the seeming impossibility of social change in America, and on the failure of his own generation.

  The sequences of Travolta using both sound and film technology to determine whether or not there was a shot or not remains absolutely thrilling, but what's striking to me at…

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  Review by nickusen 4

  the whole time you’re watching this you’re thinking, “is this the best movie of all time???”

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★★ 3

  It’s a good scream. Easily just one of the best movies.

  Full discussion on ep 230 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.

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  Review by sydney ★★★★★ 2

  Pornography for analog fetishists, paranoid voyeurs, mentally unbalanced Americans.

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  Review by comrade_yui ★★★★★ 2

  love how de palma has the entire opening scene of this devoted just to making fun of john carpenter for no reason other than spite

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  Review by brendan o'hare ★★★★ 1

  Travolta is so good and the ending is incredible. Once again very different than Rataouille

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  Review by Sethsreviews ★★★★★ 18

  An instant, INSTANT all time favourite. A meticulously crafted dark mystery that never lacks suspense nor excitement. Beautifully shot, seamlessly edited and wonderfully acted. De Palma’s use of split diopter shots is absurdly good. Arguably a landmark in cinematic paranoia, political cynicism and the use of sound. Looking forward to rewatching!