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| EFC STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
30662 |
| Total Ratings: |
245811 |
| Total Reviews: |
27577 |
![[156613172 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?156613172)
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| DETROIT |
"The War At Home"
Peter Sobczynski says... "Even if they didn’t happen to be coming out in theaters within a week of each other, it would be easy to recognize any number of unexpected and inadvertent parallels between Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit” and Chritstopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk.” Both are large-scale and serious-minded historical dramas aimed at adult audiences coming out in the middle of a moviegoing season usually dedicated to aggressively silly nonsense. Both tell dark and uncompromising stories that largely eschew the kind of simple-minded melodramatics that are usually inserted into such things as a way of allegedly broadening their potential appeal. Both are stunning technical achievements from two of the best filmmakers working today that place viewers smack dab in the middle of their respective events with a ruthless and sometimes horrifying efficiency that is not easy to shake once they leave the multiplex. And yet, while “Dunkirk” is sure to go down as one of the best films of the year, “Detroit,” while certainly a more dramatically challenging work by far, just misses the mark—it contains some of the most powerful and unforgettable filmmaking you are likely to see anytime soon but also includes a couple of key elements that are awkward enough to keep it from fully coming together." (more)
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| ATOMIC BLONDE |
"Simmers with the Cold War, but when it explodes. .."
Jay Seaver says... "SCREENED AT THE 2017 FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: "Atomic Blonde" is an odd duck, a Cold War spy movie that probably couldn't be made until after the Berlin Wall fell, and which is so dominated by a few extraordinary action scenes that the double-dealing and betrayal almost becomes a side note. That's not a bad choice at all - the story is one more game of spy v. spy that's not going to stick in one's memory, but those fights in the middle of East German apartment buildings are ones to rewatch." (more)
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| VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS |
"Colorful, fast-paced, and fun, 'Valerian' captures the comics well."
Jay Seaver says... "SCREENED AT THE 2017 FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: I forget whether I started buying the new English-language printings of "Valerian & Laureline" upon hearing that Luc Besson would be doing a movie or if reading the first few of those got me excited to hear Besson was making the film; it was about the same time. I say this not because I'm in the tank for this and you should downgrade my praise accordingly, but because I started out hoping for another fast, colorful sci-fi picture like "The Fifth Element" and wound up hoping they wouldn't change the comic too much. That's likely not a huge issue for most English-language viewers, who will hopefully embrace what bright, kinetic fun it is even if the script is lacking in spots." (more)
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| DUNKIRK |
"Another Triumph For Christopher Nolan"
Peter Sobczynski says... "Because they are both elaborately conceived and executed recreations of key events of World War II from two of the most popular American filmmakers of the moment, there is an excellent chance that many of the reviews of Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” will end up mentioning Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” (1998) as a key influence. I suppose that comparisons between the two are inevitable and even justified at certain times but after reflecting upon it for a bit, I have come to realize that the film that “Dunkirk” most closely suggests is the other WW II epic from 1998, Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line.” Both are films from distinctive and ambitious filmmakers that show them looking at the biggest and most transformative event of the 20th century from their unique cinematic perspectives and both have little concern for the more traditional approach towards narrative drive and character development of other films of its type. The end result is a film that undeniably delivers the goods and solidifies Nolan’s position as on of the most talented and ambitious filmmakers of our time but goes about it in such an unexpected way that the end result is liable to perplex as many viewers as viewers as it attracts." (more)
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| SUPER DARK TIMES |
"Surviving adolescence intact is no small challenge."
Jay Seaver says... "SCREENED AT THE 2017 FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: I coincidentally went to my twenty-five-year high-school reunion the weekend before seeing "Super Dark Times", spending some time laughing at friends' stories about events that could have gone wrong in similarly horrific ways but never did, and while that doesn't quite line my timeline up with this 1990s-set story, it had me a little more open to this sort of throwback than I usually am. Which is good, because though it's got a few bumps toward the end, I'd hate to dismiss a pretty good movie because I'm usually more interested in the present." (more)
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| WISH UPON |
"Ancient Chinese Secret--Meh!"
Peter Sobczynski says... "When it comes time to create my year-end list of the worst movies of the year, I generally exclude the usual crop of lame, teen-oriented horror trash from consideration on the basis that I could easily base an entire list around such low-grade junk and would prefer to concentrate on more ambitious works that still managed to screw things up despite having any number of advantages going for them. However, after watching “Wish Upon,” I am seriously considering rethinking that particular approach because even though it is squarely aimed at the least discriminating of teen audiences, it is so artistically shabby, morally dubious and all-around shitty that it is hard to imagine that too many worse films will emerge during the rest of the year." (more)
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| WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES |
"War—What Is It Good For? In This Case, Quite A Bit. . ."
Peter Sobczynski says... "Of course, it is no longer unusual these days for any reasonably popular film to score itself a sequel or two, if not its own full-fledged screen universe—half the time, such things are already in the planning stages before the initial movie even comes out. However, how often do you get a screen franchise where the films get smarter, better and more ambitious as they continue to go along? Such a thing is rare indeed, though I think most moviegoers would agree that the “Mad Max” and “Toy Story” sagas managed to pull this trick off. Most of the time, you get a decent first film—if you are lucky—followed by additional entries that only serve the rehash things that have already been done the first time around in the hopes of scoring another hit at the box-office with a minimum of effort." (more)
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| MAUDIE |
"More about artist than art, though both are deceptively simple."
Jay Seaver says... "It's tough to make movies about people like Maud and Everett Lewis. As presented here, they're kind of slow, and even though they're not actually stupid, it takes a while to get to know them well enough for that to be clear (and they're never actually shrewd like you might like them to be for balance). It's easy to feel like the filmmakers and audience are exploiting them in the same way that one gets an itch that they might have been exploited in real life." (more)
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INTERVIEW WITH LARRY COHEN: HAIL TO THE KING
by Peter Sobczynski |
| "The creator of such B-movie classics as "It's Alive," "God Told Me To," "Q--The Winged Serpent" and "The Stuff" talks about his eclectic career and being the subject of the new documentary ''King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen," premiering this weekend at the Fantasia Film Festival." (more) |
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'I'M A GODDAMN MARVEL OF MODERN SCIENCE.'
- McMurphy, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
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