Essays

Why “The Terminator” (1984) is the Greatest Terminator Film

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The Terminator (1984) is a better film than Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).  The other movies in the franchise are utter garbage and will not be discussed further.  And, if you’ll lower your pitchforks for long enough, this piece will provide several arguments asserting the superiority of The Terminator.  I’ll compare three aspects of the … Read more

“Spartacus”: the Three-Headed Triumph of Douglas, Trumbo, and Kubrick

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The third essay in a year-long analysis of the films of Stanley Kubrick.  Check out the schedule and explanation here, where you can also find links to all the completed pieces. Introduction Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas and written by Dalton Trumbo, may be the best Swords-and-Sandals story ever put to film.  The film … Read more

Stanley Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory”, the Politically Powerful, and the Absurdity of War

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The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.The paths of glory lead but to the grave. -Thomas Grey, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,1751 Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory is often celebrated as the director’s first true masterwork.  Adapting a novel of the … Read more

Classic Review – Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)

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INTRODUCTION

In 1991, dozens of happy accidents converged into one of the greatest thrillers of all time:  The Silence of the Lambs.  It is the most recent film to win Academy Awards in all five of the major categories (both leading actors, screenplay, director, and best picture).  As that distinction may suggest, practically every aspect of the film boasts superlatives.  The performances are exceptional.  Ted Tally’s adaption of the screenplay structures the film with the familiar beats of the hero’s journey, but provides enough twists to keep us on edge.  Jonathan Demme’s direction shows restraint and courage, and produces moments rife with tension, many of which do not exist on the page.  The characters, technical work, and writing all cooperate towards a single goal:  championing a theme of female strength and intellect in a world dominated by men, and the courage that it takes to confront true evil.

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Dishonesty Doesn’t Pay in Stanley Kubrick’s Innovative Noir “The Killing”

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Stanley Kubrick described his heist film The Killing as his, “first mature work”, and the film boasts many of the director’s eventual hallmarks.  Techniques that appear in Kubrick’s later masterpieces can be seen in a nascent form throughout the film, as if Kubrick is exploring the possibilities of his own voice and style.  Specifically, The Killing purposely confuses the viewer through keen story structure choices and twists on the heist genre.  The result is a disorientation that forwards a theme that trickery, thievery, and crime – even those which are meticulously planned, are doomed to failure.

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Why You Can’t Trust User Ratings from IMDB: A Case Study

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It can be incredibly difficult to get a feel for the “critical consensus” for a new film, if there even is such a thing.  But, online review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic do their best to provide their readers with a general idea of the quality of a film, which I have discussed at length before.  Today, I’d like to show a crystal clear example of why another metric, the User Ratings from IMDB.com, borders on absolute uselessness.  Put bluntly, the site does not require that a person giving a rating has even seen the movie.  The result is blatant vote-brigading, either artificially elevating a substandard film through the sheer size of the fanbase of its underlying intellectual property, or unjustly punishing a film for its perceived transgressions that are unrelated to the quality of the filmmaking.  In the former case, we’ll look at Batman v. Superman:  Dawn of Justice, and in the later, the more recent A Dog’s Purpose.

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A Career of Masterpieces – Analyzing the Filmography of Stanley Kubrick

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As I mentioned in my State of the Blog post this month, I am planning a series of in-depth essays on the films of Stanley Kubrick.  Near the end of each month, I will publish an essay on one of Kubrick’s films, and I intend these pieces to be worthy of the films that they are analyzing, not mere “reviews”.  This will not be a trivial pursuit.  And, I acknowledge that I may not be up to the Herculean task.  Regardless, these are some of my favorite films, and I hope to enhance my enjoyment of them (and yours!) through analysis and discussion.

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My Top Ten Films of 2016 (Plus Lots More)

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As 2016 draws to a close, it is the ideal time to reflect upon a fantastic year for film.  Though the major tentpoles disappointed and suggest that the Big Hollywood machine is starting to sputter, this may be the single best year for film of the century, and I intend to argue the merits of each film on my Top Ten List.

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The Enchanting “Spirited Away” is Miyazaki’s Greatest Animated Film

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Today, words are exceedingly lightweight.  You can say whatever you like because words are as substantive as foam to us.  That’s no more than a reflection of how empty our reality has become.  And yet even now, the truth is that words are power.  It’s just that we’re meaninglessly drowning in a sea of powerless, vacuous words.

-Hayao Miyazaki, 1999 – Director’s notes for Spirited Away

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All Aboard the Elle Fanning Hype Train

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Elle Fanning isn’t exactly a new kid on the block.  In fact, her first film was a full 15 years ago, when she was the two-year-old version of Lucy Diamond Dawson in I am Sam.  Since then, Fanning has often portrayed younger versions of her older sister Dakota, but her filmography extends well beyond playing second-fiddle.  Her breakout role was likely her turn as Alice Dainard in J.J. Abram’s Super 8, which I enjoyed just fine.  But, it is her most recent work that augurs greatness.  Maleficent was a strong performance, and she also managed to be the second best actor in Trumbo, behind the Oscar-nominated Bryan Cranston.  Then there was The Neon Demon.  After gushing about this film, I decided to look more closely at the career of Fanning, and I was surprised to find her starring in seven films between now and the end of 2017!

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