Letterboxd — Your life in film

slight spoilers

As an artist of emotional and melodramatic impact Fuller really is an all-guns-blazing sort of motherfucker who will take the full powers of his cinematic form and sharpen them to a point of total laceration. Take for instance the very long sequence of the children singing their song about the sun setting; a melancholy, strange, over-long addition, which upon initial viewing seems like a dreamy, beautiful digression that's ever so tinged with sadness. But Fuller takes that song…

Definitely Eggers' most narratively straightforward film, yet it never once sacrifices his weirder, more abstract sensibilities. So many truly jaw-dropping images and sequences of the most beautiful savagery you'll ever see. Such an immersive piece of filmmaking, too, completely transporting you to this world of griminess and brutality. And you'd never know that this was the first time Eggers had handled action, because the action sequences here are legitimately better than 99% of blockbusters. It probably could've trimmed a bit…

Viewed the Reconstructed version on Blu-ray.

Picture this:

Infinite darkness. At once so close and at the same time, so far away. Endlessly drifting closer, sending your nerves into a dizzying panic of heightened hysteria and emotional turmoil, is your greatest fear. It's coming closer, closer, closer, closer, closer. At that point, you cannot move. Your physical body is frozen, yet your mental state is as frenzied as an abused animal; lost and alone. You feel it. The touch of…

I am very happy to report that, for the most part, Raimi was allowed to cook! First act felt really rushed and was pretty standard Marvel set up, albeit with much better color-grading than usual and some pretty cool scene transitions. Then the second act, and the multiversal travel, hits and more and more of Raimi is evident. Then in the third act (usually the worst part of these movies), Raimi is pretty much totally unleashed, managing to mix the…

Beyond its obvious positions as a "self-portrait of artist as a pimp" what always strike a chord for me the most is the editing. Cassavetes is obvious one of the great editing minds in film, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is even more impressive because it moves with fatalistic certainty, we know of Cosmo's trap as much as one would about Edward G. Robinson in a Lang movie, yet Cassavetes keeps finds ways to surprise us until hitting that…