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| EFC STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
31722 |
| Total Ratings: |
248081 |
| Total Reviews: |
28026 |
![[171884662 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?171884662)
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| OUTLAW KING |
"Missing what it takes to be an epic for small or big screen."
Jay Seaver says... "A local theater has a 70mm/widescreen festival that includes a lot of epics of the sort that "Outlaw/King" is looking to be, and though Charlton Heston seems like ridiculous casting for 75% of the ones he's in, I wonder what a Robert the Bruce picture with him in the lead would have been like, or at least one made to dazzle on a huge Cinemascope screen rather than one shot knowing that it will get 99.9% if its audience on Netflix. Maybe it had the same problems, but maybe it stands a chance of overpowering them with sheer theatricality and spectacle." (more)
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| LAST LETTER (2018) |
"Grief and laughter mixed just right."
Jay Seaver says... "It is entirely possible that by this time next year, we'll be looking at this "Last Letter" as one half of a phenomenon fairly unique in film history, as director Shunji Iwai is already shooting a remake of this Mandarin-language movie in his native Japan - it usually goes in the other order, and seldom in such rapid succession. Those strange circumstances make this film an oddity, but nevertheless still in line with Iwai's previous films, an earnest and emotional work that's also quite sweet and funny." (more)
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| OVERLORD (2018) |
"Delivers a solid battle with Nazi monsters, and what more do you want?"
Jay Seaver says... "Even without the horror stuff plastered all over the advertising, I don't think you could take someone to see "Overlord" as a wartime action film and have them be caught flat-footed by things going into a decidedly less realistic direction. It gives the game away fairly early and doesn't build quite enough to feel like more than the basics before doing so, but the jump to mad scientists and monsters works pretty well." (more)
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| ROMA (2018) |
"Maybe Cuaron's best, smart and heartfelt and beautiful all at once."
Jay Seaver says... "There are those that believe that subtlety is the mark of truly great art, and manipulation is its enemy, but it seems unlikely that Alfonso CuarĂłn is among them, and not just because he has done as much popular, commercial work as art-house material. "Roma" falls into the latter category, and viewers can spend a lot of time teasing out how it works and what its symbols mean, but even without putting that sort of academic effort in, they'll feel what CuarĂłn is saying and be pulled along. It's superficially a piece of film-snob material that anybody can enjoy." (more)
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| RAMPANT |
"This combination should be more fun."
Jay Seaver says... "You might reasonably expect a fusion of palace intrigue and supernatural action to be a lot more exciting than "Rampant" turns out to be, or at the very least more crazy. Maybe that's an inevitable peril of setting this sort of horror movie in a time when people mostly believed in demons - they are just not going to yell "what the hell?" when discovering that they're in the middle of this crazy mash-up the way the audience is - but either half could certainly be a better take on its genre." (more)
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| VOX LUX |
"A voice that says more or less than it seems."
Jay Seaver says... "Huh. I have apparently aged to the point where I am incapable of distinguishing pop music from a parody of such. That makes this one difficult to figure; writer/director Brady Corbet gives his story of a pop star's rise and potential stumble a heightened presentation and occasionally absurd details but otherwise plays things almost completely straight, cutting off the easy routes to mockery or earnest appreciation. It's an interesting set-up, but one which often leaves its characters and audience in an in-between spot." (more)
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| BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY |
"It Isn't Just The Wind That Blows Here"
Peter Sobczynski says... "With his raw and undeniable charisma, his unabashedly sexual presence, his ability to command the attention and focus of anywhere he stood, from a recording studio to the stage of the mammoth Live Aid concert, and, of course, that knockout voice that filled arenas throughout the world with a series of raucous anthems that continue to be played and celebrated decades after they were recorded, Freddie Mercury, the late lead singer of the hugely popular rock band Queen was, even by the oftentimes outlandish world of contemporary music, a performer who could legitimately be considered one of a kind. For anyone trying to put together a biopic centered around Mercury, that leads to the inevitable problem of trying to find someone capable of perfectly emulating all of those aspects that made Mercury stand out amongst his peers while at the same time delivering a convincing dramatic performance. This is no doubt the reason why “Bohemian Rhapsody” took so long to get made—there are precious few actors out there who would even seem to qualify for consideration (I have always thought that the only ideal person would have been the “Rocky Horror”-era Tim Curry) and the ones that might have been able to pull it off—Sacha Baron Cohen reportedly flirted with the part for a while—presumably bailed because of the extremely high risk of failure." (more)
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| NUTCRACKER AND THE FOUR REALMS, THE |
"Don't Try So Hard"
Peter Sobczynski says... "Over the years of my existence, I have seen more permutations of the holiday favorite “The Nutcracker,” ranging from readings of the original E.T.A. Hoffmann short story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” to several live productions of the ballet adaptation staged by legendary choreographer Ruth Page to more film versions than I care to recall, including a clinically insane 2010 take that somehow managed to work Nazis, Albert Einstein (played by Nathan Lane, no less) and the augmentation of Tchaikovsky’s legendary music with lyrics by the slightly less immortal Tim Rice and then presented it in exceptionally ugly 3-D to boot. I must confess that I have never particularly cared for the story, regardless of the format—my favorite version is probably the one they did on “SCTV” in which they used it as a framework to skewer the increasingly hacky stylings of a certain comedic genius in an elaborate film parody entitled “Neil Simon’s Nutcracker Suite”—but I have seen enough of them to tell when one isn’t working for me just because of my general antipathy towards the material (such as the Ruth Page productions, which I dutifully attended as family events because my younger brother, perhaps inevitably, adored it) and when one is working because it is just bad. Until now, I would have named that aforementioned version that included Nazis and Einstein (and which also included John Turturro as the Mouse King, as I recall) as the impossible-to-beat nadir but now that I have seen “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” I have to admit that we have a new winner for that deeply dubious title. At least with the one with Einstein, it was of such a screw-loose what-could-they-have-been-thinking? badness that it compelled you to watch, if only to see how much more frothing mad it could get. This one, on the other hand, is such a misshapen lump of ham-fisted “fun” that the mere act of sitting through it becomes actively painful after a while—imagine having a three-ton gumdrop sitting on your lap for 90-odd minutes and you can only begin to fully conjure the horror that this movie inspires." (more)
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'OH LOOK, WE HAVE CREATED ENCHANTMENT!'
- Blanche, A Streetcar Named Desire
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