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| EFC STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
32744 |
| Total Ratings: |
250046 |
| Total Reviews: |
28624 |
![[195391516 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?195391516)
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| LEGALLY DECLARED DEAD |
"Nowhere near a perfect crime and that may just be the point."
Jay Seaver says... "SCREENED VIA THE 2020 FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: Steve Yuen Kim-Wai's "Legally Declared Dead" is one of those thrillers that is chock-full of ridiculous things and occasionally looks like there Kwai could have put in more, if he'd felt like it, but he's got just enough sense to recognize where the point of diminishing returns is. It's a nutty movie, and probably a B-movie under most conditions, but it got to hit screens in Hong Kong and the genre festival circuit when neither China nor the West was releasing much of anything. It's more than enough fun for those circumstances and will probably hold up well enough afterward." (more)
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| WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS |
"Plummer is Quite the Plum"
Jack Sommersby says... "In an unfortunate day and age of impersonal big-budget superhero movies, this is a welcome surprise." (more)
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| TRAIN TO BUSAN PRESENTS: PENINSULA |
"Day of the Dead: Fury Road"
Jay Seaver says... "2016's "Train to Busan" was one of the most electrifying zombie movies to hit screens in years, a rare unique twist on the genre with impeccable, creative action and a pretty terrific cast. Filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho's third trip to that world (including animated prequel "Seoul Station") doesn't quite have the same electricity of his previous films, but it's still a fast-moving thrill ride that deserves a better time to get some time on the big screen." (more)
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| TENET |
"Everything *But* the Kitchen Sink is Thrown In"
Jack Sommersby says... "You can clearly see where its $200 million budget went, but it's hard to care." (more)
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| MULAN (2020) |
"Crouching Tigress, Absolutely No Dragon"
Peter Sobczynski says... "The announcement that Disney was planning on doing a mega-expensive live-action remake of its 1998 animated hit “Mulan” did not exactly fill my heart with glee when I first heard about it. After all, while the original film had its good points—some striking visuals, a reasonably respectful take on Asian culture and a gender-bending plot line that, for an animated film targeted at family audiences, was almost radical in nature—it did hedge its bets by including elements designed to make the stranger stuff more palatable to less adventurous viewers despite being wildly out of place, such as songs, a romantic subplot and a cute dragon sidekick with the ethnically-dubious voice of Eddie Murphy. The other problem is the inescapable fact that while Disney has been doing live-action versions of their animated films for a few years now to much financial success, most of them, such as “Beauty and the Beast,” “Cinderella” and “The Lion King” (which was technically animated as well, but never mind), were pale and lumbering imitations of the originals. The only one that really succeeded was David Lowry’s shockingly lyrical and moving take on the less-than-stellar “Pete’s Dragon” (2016) and that was because it was the only time in the short history of these remakes where you got the sense that the film was being made for artistic reasons as well as financial." (more)
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| UNHINGED |
"Unctuous 'Unhinged'"
Jack Sommersby says... "It's more than a bit like watching a gruesomely R-rated Road Runner cartoon without the entertainment value." (more)
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| I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS |
"It’s Not Your Fault. . ."
Peter Sobczynski says... "A few weeks ago, I found myself watching “Wild at Heart,” David Lynch’s controversial orgy of sex, violence and snakeskin jackets that won the top prize at Cannes in 1990 but faced a more hostile reception when it went into general release. As it turns out, I have pretty much the same feelings towards it now that I first saw it 30 years ago. On the one hand, it is made with Lynch’s usual skill, the performances by Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as the lovers on the run and there are enough moments of erotic heat, splattery violence and oddball humor to keep it humming along throughout. At the same time, if I had to rank Lynch’s feature films, I would probably have to put it last—yes, even behind his largely misbegotten adaptation of “Dune” (1984), which at least had some astonishing moments of visual grandeur going for it—because it was the first and only time that he seemed to be consciously catering to expectations of what a David Lynch film should be. The weirdo touches and outre moments felt forced and even the good parts had more than a whiff of the familiar about them. Again, it isn’t a bad movie per se but it is the one that feels more like an offering from a Lynch fanatic replicating the greatest hits than something new and truly inventive." (more)
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| TENET |
"Never Say "Entropy" Again"
Peter Sobczynski says... "In recent years, when there has been talk over who should get the job of directing a James Bond movie, Christopher Nolan’s name has usually been at the top of those list. He certainly has a flair for creating hugely successful event films on a scale that make even the usually overstuffed Bond extravaganzas seem puny by comparison and he has often spoken of being a fan of the franchise—the ski attack sequence in “Inception” alone struck many as an overt homage to the climax of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Of course, there is no way that the Broccoli family that has been producing the Bond series to great success for nearly 60 years would ever cede to Nolan the kind of creative control that he would presumably require in order to sign on to make one. Instead, Nolan has given us “Tenet,” the first blockbuster epic of the Covid era and a film that fuses together a Bond-style globetrotting adventure with all of the accoutrements one associates with the franchise with the kind of head-spinning narrative that Nolan has become famous for that includes a particular emphasis on his long-standing interest in time as a cinematic devise, both as a structural challenge and as a narrative devise. Unfortunately, when all is said and done, the only thing that most viewers will be absolutely sure of when they come out of it is that the Broccoli family may have had the right idea all along for “Tenet” is, for all of the anticipation surrounding it, kind of a mess—an undeniably ambitious but dramatically confused story which feels as if it is going out of its way to come across as the most deliberately obtuse and impossible-to-follow Bond film ever made, or at least since the original version of “Casino Royale” (1967) and at least there was a number of reasons why that one didn’t make much sense." (more)
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FILMS I NEGLECTED TO REVIEW: DAVID&DAVID
by Peter Sobczynski |
| "Please enjoy short reviews of "Centigrade," "DieRy," "Get Duked," "The Personal History of David Copperfield," "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump" and "You Cannot Kill David Arquette."" (more) |
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FILMS I NEGLECTED TO REVIEW: LIONS AND ZOMBIES AND ANGST--OH MY!
by Peter Sobczynski |
| "Please enjoy short reviews of "Chemical Hearts," "Desert One," "The One and Only Ivan," "The Pale Door," "Peninsula," "Random Acts of Violence," "Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies," "Tesla" and "Words on Bathroom Walls" as well as a look at Criterion's groundbreaking box set "The Complete Films of Agnes Vada."" (more) |
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'SHE'S A FOX. IN FRENCH SHE WOULD BE CALLED "LA RENARDE" AND SHE WOULD BE HUNTED WITH ONLY HER CUNNING TO PROTECT HER.'
- Wayne Campbell, Wayne's World
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