Michael Myers vs. The Shape

John Carpenter is always the first to point out that he never set out to create some sort of mystique surrounding Michael Myers. The character is billed in the credits and the script as “The Shape”, rather than by its given name. This is a conscious decision by Carpenter and his co-writer Debra Hill to further imbue a sense of supernatural and pervasive evil that could not be matched by a flesh-and-blood human (as presented…

Dr. Pretorius or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Strange

In James Whale’s completely bonkers 1935 masterpiece Bride of Frankenstein, a story unfurls about the inborn desire of humans (or monsters) to seek out a mate with whom to share love. The nefarious Dr. Pretorius convinces the ever-so-slightly-less-nefarious Dr. Frankenstein to join forces with him in order to create the titular “Bride” as a companion to Frankenstein’s previous creation, whom I will call Lennie for the sake…

Wildly ambitious and designed beautifully, LEGEND works more the less you think about it.

Ridley Scott's direction has moments, as does the cinematography, but these brief spells of effectiveness are undercut by a screenplay with little new to say (not to mention thinly-drawn characters) and editing that never feels quite right. The performances are generally okay, with Tim Curry's Darkness thankfully showing up right before the film puts you to sleep. Jerry Goldsmith's score is swelling and solid, though my…

The natural evolution of the 90s Bruckheimer Special, BAD BOYS FOR LIFE filters the hard-R, trigger happy, collateral-damage-be-damned buddy comedy of the first two films through the soap opera on steroids, superteam-based broadstrokes brawniness of the late-stage FAST AND FURIOUS movies.

Much like those films, this one is at its most entertaining in the moments it takes itself the least serious: the chase scenes, the shootouts, the bits and riffs. On the flip side, the script is less successful. Characters…

Apocalyptic Duality.

Jordan Peele is a master filmmaker, in every sense of the term. His writing is dense, filled to the gills with breadcrumbs and double entendre. Yet, somehow it's also light and always entertaining. His direction is steady, unrushed. Yet, his calculated pacing and knack for musical cues lend an air of almost Amblin-esque charm to everything he touches. I'm unsure of his exact technique for working with actors, but damned if every single performer we see isn't perfectly…

Not at all what I had expected from three decades of build-up with having only seen the few clips of this that invariably end up on any "cinematic greatest hits" montage; it's less fun, more lyrical, and generally a different beast than I had come to expect from watching mostly later-career Spielberg growing up. This isn't to say that this film doesn't feel like his work (it has all the character touchstones we've come to expect), it's just riding a…