The original movie whose special effects are so good it obscures the plot. But who cares, when the spectacle is up to this standard? Each individual figure is hand-tinted by Melies, and the substitution effects still have a magical, whimsical quality at this remove. Rooted in the feree of French stage productions, there's something about seeing the craft involved that makes those effects truly special.
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The Hitch-Hiker 1953
52 films by women 2017: 26/52.
Fascinating in how little Lupino's gender affects the testosterone-heavy narrative, but her general outsider status does; the depiction of Mexicans and Hispanic Americans is far, far ahead of what you'd expect from a Hollywood film of the 1950s. The final stretch reminded me, in its unrelenting desert-set paranoia, of Joseph Losey's Figures in a Landscape.
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Pride 2014
I was going to add a caveat to this review, to say that perhaps it wasn't a 4.5 film, but if you're queer, or if you're from one of those towns - you know, the ones with shops that you've never seen without the shutters down, the ones whose people are said to be "workshy" by people on TV despite the fact that some of the older residents still have scars on their head that they got from literally, physically…
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Ghostbusters 2016
You shouldn't have to talk about fandom, of course. You shouldn't have to earn the right to offer your opinions on movies, and no good movie should be dependent on goodwill ported over from previous source material. It's just that, for me, there is something a bit special about Ghostbusters - the original movies, and the cartoon series spun off from them. The movies were a bit too scary for young me at the time they came out, actually, so…
