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| EFC STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
32012 |
| Total Ratings: |
248916 |
| Total Reviews: |
28208 |
![[179162626 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?179162626)
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| YESTERDAY |
"Revolution Nein or I Should Have Known Better"
Peter Sobczynski says... "While the musical legacy of the Beatles continues to dominate and influence the pop culture firmament almost a half-century down the road since their dissolution, filmmakers have inexplicably had a difficult time grappling with that legacy in cinematic terms. I am not talking about the group’s own occasional big-screen forays—“A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) remains one of the most joyful movie experiences that anyone will ever have, “Help” (1965) is a cheerfully surreal romp that is harmed today only by the fact that a plot involving fanatics attempting to kill a Beatle doesn’t seem as much of a laughing matter as it once did, “Yellow Submarine” (1968) is cute (though not entirely my cup of tea) and “Let It Be” (1970) was the harrowing flip side to “A Hard Day’s Night” that did not dwell on the group’s imminent breakup but nevertheless displayed the fraying group dynamics that would eventually lead to their split. However, when other filmmakers have tried to use the group—either the music, the mythos or both—as the launching pad for their own narratives, the results have often been disastrous. Of course, there was Robert Zemeckis’s brilliant 1978 debut “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” a great and sadly undersign comedy about a group of kids caught up in Beatlemania during the night that the group made their famous first appearance on Ed Sullivan’s variety show, and “All You Need is Cash” (1978), Eric Idle’s loving-yet-cutting mockumentary charting the rise and fall of a suspiciously familiar British pop group but those have proven to be the exceptions that otherwise prove the rule. For example, consider “All This and World War II” (1976), a bizarre documentary consisting entirely of documentary footage covering the whole of WW II set to a string of dubiously connected Beatle covers. Then there was “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1978), the infamous critical and commercial disaster in which a couple dozen late-period Beatles songs were hammered into a narrative featuring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees battling the forces of darkness, represented here by the likes of Donald Pleasance, Aerosmith and Steve Martin as Dr. Maxwell Edison. Of course, who could forget—at least not without the aid of shock treatment—“Across the Universe” (2007), in which more than thirty songs were jammed together into the kind of overstuffed jukebox musical that left one wanting simply pull the plug and bring the whole lunatic thing to an end. (You know you are in trouble with a film when a cameo from Bono constitutes one of its subtler aspects.) And while I suppose that it doesn’t exactly count as a Beatles-related film per se, Paul McCartney’s 1984 egofest “Give My Regards to Broad Street” was perhaps the dumbest thing that he has ever done professionally and he did drag a few Beatles classics (along with Ringo Starr) down with it." (more)
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| TOY STORY 4 |
"The Low Spork and High Heeled Toys"
Peter Sobczynski says... "When the original “Toy Story” came out in 1995, few people had great expectations for it—even Disney, normally a company cheerfully willing to oversell even the most meager examples of their output, was so unsure of how it would do that it did not have many toys and tie-ins available at the time of its holiday season debut. After all, a film speculating on the after-hours life of the denizens of a young boy’s toy collection when not in use might make for an amusing short but how could it possibly stretch to fill a feature-length running time? Therefore, it was a shock to discover that the film would prove to be a triple threat—it was a massive hit with audiences, it was adored by critics across the board and it single-handedly ushered in a new age in feature animation that shifted its focus from the traditional hand-drawn format to the new world of CGI technology. For their debut feature, the Pixar production company set a high water mark that few would have dreamed of coming close to duplicating but when they came up with “Toy Story 2” in 1999, they managed to somehow top themselves with the rare sequel that was actually better than the original—funnier and more exciting, to be sure, but with an unexpected emotional edge to the proceedings that found unexpected resonance with viewers and which put most adult-oriented films to shame. When “Toy Story 3” came out nine years later, it faced the twin challenges of not only living up to the insanely high expectations set by its predecessors but also bringing the entire saga to a satisfying conclusion. Once again, the film defied expectations by creating another funny, touching and wholly original work that expanded on the story and the characters rather than simply calling back on past glories and even stuck the landing by finding an absolutely perfect grace note to bow out on. Fans of the franchise (not to mention the accounting department at Disney) probably would have loved to see the saga continue on but even they had to admit that if the saga had to come to an end, it could not have done it better than it did with “Toy Story 3.”" (more)
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| DEAD DON'T DIE, THE |
"Brains! Braaains!...Somebody took Jim Jarmusch's braaaains!"
alejandroariera says... "The idea of a Jim Jarmusch zombie movie raises a whole lot of expectations, not to mention that it draws a bemused smile. Jarmusch, after all, is no stranger to genre fare; he brought his distinctive, sometimes ironic, laidback touch to such genre exercises as the hired killer film (“The Limits of Control” and “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai”), the vampire film (“Only Lovers Left Alive”) and the Western (“Dead Man,” still his masterpiece). How would he handle a genre that’s been shot in the head countless times by movies, comics and TV series alike? What new ideas could Jarmusch bring to the table? Turns out that none, actually. There is nothing Jarmusch does in “The Dead Don’t Die” that hasn’t already been done better by the likes of the genre’s (as we know it) grandfather George Romero and by the likes of Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead”) and Alejandro Brugués (“Juan of the Dead,” itself a riff on Wright’s film). “The Dead Don’t Die’ may have been conceived as a lark, an alumni reunion for the actors who have worked with Jarmusch in the past. And the film is amusing…for awhile. But it soon wears out its welcome." (more)
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| DEAD DON'T DIE, THE |
"a.k.a. Coffee and Cigarettes and Brains"
Peter Sobczynski says... "There have been so many zombie-related films and television shows that have come along in recent years that I could probably go the rest of my life without seeing another one of them and not feel as if I have missed anything, especially since George Romero, who kickstarted the genre with such classics as “Night of the Living Dead” and “Dawn of the Dead,” is no longer around to make them. That said, when I first heard of the existence of “The Dead Don’t Die,” I could not wait to see it for myself. Yes, it is a zombie horror-comedy, an offshoot almost as tiresome these days as more straightforward takes, but it is one from the mind of writer-director Jim Jarmusch, who has proven himself to be one of the most consistently intriguing and unique American independent filmmakers since making his big breakthrough with the 1984 low-budget classic “Stranger Than Paradise.” In addition, it also contains one of the most eyebrow-raising casts to appear in any sort of film in a long time, including the likes of Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Danny Glover, Steve Buscemi, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Selena Gomez, Rosie Perez and, perhaps inevitably, Tilda Swinton. You would think that any film bringing together a collection of talents of that caliber would have to be interesting by default—I would personally pay a great deal of money to see a documentary of this group sitting down to have lunch one day during the shoot—but despite the amount of unique personalities at its disposal, the film never quite manages to generate one of its own. It isn’t a disaster by any means and it does contain a number of laughs and good individual moments but it never quite gets around to pulling them together in an interesting way that might make it seem like something more than a hipster version of “The Cannonball Run.”" (more)
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| SHAFT (2019) |
"Seriously, Shut Your Mouth!"
Peter Sobczynski says... "At one point during “Shaft,” the fifth big-screen adventure centered around the quintessential blaxploitation hero (and the third of the bunch to be called “Shaft”), a character refers to the titular hero, bad-ass detective John Shaft, as being “the black James Bond.” If this is true—and there was a time when I for one would not have argued that particular notion—then this film finds him trapped in the equivalent of one of those lesser Roger Moore vehicles that told lame, unfocused and creatively bankrupt stories that leaned way too heavily on the kind of forced humor that tried to plant its tongue in its cheek but ended up landing it somewhere lower. I suspect that most people coming into this film with at least some working knowledge of the history of the franchise will probably have certain expectations regarding what they hope to find—most of them presumably revolving around Shaft swooping in at any given moment to shoot a lot of bad guys in the face while the unmistakable voice of Isaac Hayes goes on at supremely funky length extolling his virtues both as a detective and as a ladies man par excellence. What they are probably not expecting to see are endless scenes featuring Shaft as a grumpy ol’ gun-toting man constantly complaining about those darn millennials with their WiFi and their Ubers and coconut water. And yet, that is the aspect that ends up dominating the proceedings and transforms what was once a genuinely revolutionary and transgressive action franchise into little more than an extended episode of “The Cosby Show” with a higher body count than usual." (more)
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| MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL |
"Where The Aliens Arrive From The Other Side Of The Galaxy"
Peter Sobczynski says... "When the original “Men in Black” film came out in 1997, the combination of a cheerfully goofball screenplay inspired by the lighter side of deep conspiracy theories, elaborate special effects and the strikingly effective teaming of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones transformed that film into that rarest of beast—a wildly expensive blockbuster that still managed to maintain noticeable levels of wit, charm and originality. Just how rare of a beast it was would become evident with the arrivals of “Men in Black II” (2002) and “Men in Black 3” (2012), two astonishingly clunky followups that preferred to simply copy the stuff that worked the first time around instead of trying to find a new twist or angle to the material and whose basic entertainment value was somewhat diminished by the fact that it was apparent that neither of its stars seemed particularly excited with the notion of returning to the fold. “Men in Black: International” is an attempt to restart the lucrative franchise with new people on both sides of the camera attempting to revive the spirit of the original one. Although the end result may be slightly better than such current dreadful cinematic brand extensions as “Dark Phoenix” and “Shaft,” the level of improvement is negligible at best and it still never comes close to justifying its existence." (more)
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| CHASING THE DRAGON 2: WILD WILD BUNCH |
"New decade, new crimes, less excitement."
Jay Seaver says... ""Chasing The Dragon II: Wild Wild Bunch" (aka "Master of Ransom") has a number in its title but that's more about branding than anything else: Directors Wong Jing and Kwan Chi-yiu did a period crime story a couple years ago that did fairly well, so this otherwise unconnected movie gets "Chasing the Dragon" in its name. Sadly, it isn't nearly so good as its predecessor in any particular area, and all that adds up to a crime film disposable enough that it's barely even worth the effort to look up whether it, too, was based upon actual cops and robbers." (more)
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| KNIFE+HEART |
"Queer and killer."
Jay Seaver says... "SCREENED AT BOSTON UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 21: "Knife+Heart" is a slasher set against a backdrop of gay porn in 1979 Paris and it's just as lurid as it sounds, which means it is not for everyone. It is top-notch as those go, clever and sometimes surprisingly emotional considering that it's also often well over the border of camp. There isn't much like it, and most of what is doesn't pull it off nearly so well." (more)
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'WE HAVE NO NAMES, MAN. NO NAMES. WE ARE NAMELESS!'
- Cereal Killer, Hackers
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