Letterboxd — Your life in film

Always very beautifully constructed if not beautifully paced, this is probably my favourite of the Johannes Roberts vulgar auteurist works. Whilst the Paul WS Anderson Resident Evil series is clearly indebted to a particular kinetic editing style, this one accommodates a more pared back classicism akin to mid-career John Carpenter and the like. Where it struggles to keep its momentum up, it is at the very least always interesting to look at which is no small feat in the run-of-the-mill always-producing never-directing era we find ourselves in.

Two great scenes among a pile of fairly lazy conceptual thinking; the last two Craven Scream pictures were bigger and bolder than this.

the vast majority of the time this is highly schematic as Neil Bahadur points out, and therefore a little rigid, but the rest of the time it's absolutely off the rails, up there with the best of Eisenstein, particularly in its moments of musical expression, exultation and exploration

unhinged

Denzel Washington’s Macbeth is an American through and through - a man in a foreign landscape yearning to become a celebrity - he is recognisably American, especially vocally, attempting to become the Scottish king; the great pretender. In an interesting way then, Coen’s version is a self-referential autocritique about the nature of Hollywood and the way that Hollywood coopts the languages of others (the key two here are of course Shakespeare and German expressionism). It’s just a shame that in the domain of affect this film does pretty much nothing at all - watch Kurzel’s instead.

A very good flick, well made, great action even if you’ve heard otherwise - a very sensible  continuation of this franchise and precisely what I expected to be honest (quite conventionally ‘a Matrix film’ including in its self referentiality) if a little rough around the edges.

One of the most beautifully edited films ever made.

Fie, gentrification!

A very soft and beautiful drama.

Lynchian

Surprising everybody that knows me, but most of all surprising me, this is Anderson’s best-ever work. A ridiculously uplifting film - perhaps the only genuinely political vision of the possibility of revolutionary change I’ve seen made in the Western world of late. That’s huge.

A beautiful and very surprising film, Hamaguchi really gets every moment right in this. A very soft, lyrical, often quietly formally rigorous flick. Highly recommended.