Ranking the King (Kong, that is)
Movie Magic!
The aspect of filmmaking that most captured my imagination, at a very early age, was the capacity for pure invention. Sure, the motion picture in and of itself is a magical thing. Edison and the Lumière brothers forever changed the world. But changing the world is mere child's play compared to creating entirely new worlds whole cloth. The invention of special effects has always been, to me, where the real magic lies.…
Scavenger of Human Sorrow (A Spooky Season Marathon)
Brundle: The Modern Prometheus
I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake.
This is it, folks. Ground zero. The epicenter of my lifelong obsession with goopy creature effects, body horror, and gore. The film that turned me to the dark side and left lasting scars on a fragile, young mind.
You see, my…
You know, I spend so much time talking about Blade Runner, that I sometimes forget that there was this other dystopian masterpiece with fucking God-tier production design. And, while I'd much rather inhabit Ridley Scott's dystopia, there's no denying the beauty and sheer genius of Terry Gilliam's vision. A world where bureaucracy has been taken to its logical extreme, and where the individual is just a cog in the machine. A world where daring to dream, is perhaps the greatest…
Nope, sorry. I don't usually like to be negative in reviews, but this didn't click with me... at all. It's just not a very coherent experience, yeah? It's crazy, but not crazy enough to succeed on that alone. And it's trying to be funny but doesn't really stick the landing, for me. Also, did the people involved in this just look up the 80s on Wikipedia? Cuz I was there, and this ain't it. Nobody alive in the 80s talked…
In 1990, Sion Sono traveled to the US to study at UC Berkeley. He claims to have spent the entire time he was there (around 15 months) watching B-movies and porno films, at a rate of about 5 films a day. He decided, during this period, that he would return to Japan and make the kinds of films that Japan would hate. And so he did. From what I've heard, most Japanese people hate Suicide Club. Well, that's their loss…
Look, can someone please explain to me why people still treat the Brendan Fraser Mummy movie much more kindly than this? They're both great action-adventure films based on the classic Universal Monsters, but The Mummy seems to get a pass, despite some distractingly dated CG, while Van Helsing gets unnecessarily shit on. Sure, it has some dated CG as well, though nowhere near as bad as in The Mummy (1999). This deserves better and y'all done it dirty.
I think…
