Archives: Movie Reviews

My favorite film by my favorite director.

Wait, ok. A little virtue-signalling never hurt anyone, so I'll point out: From everything I've read and seen, director Lars von Trier seems to me like kind of a disturbed or unbalanced individual, very likely a misogynist, misanthrope, almost definitely a narcissist, and probably personally an all-around malignant asshole. And also, I think, easily the most talented filmmaker of the last few decades. Not since Herzog or Tarkovsky have I seen someone who just struck me as so adept in the language of filmmaking, such a natural talent.

Breaking The Waves is a straight drama. Set on a remote Scottish island, where an American there working on an oil right has fallen in love with a local, who is a member of the island's ultra-religious church. They marry, when he is injured in an explosion on the rig, and their relationship takes…

I consider this film about a young boy who forms a friendship with centuries-old vampire who looks like a 12-year-old girl to be maybe one of the top 10 horror movies ever. This is one of those films like The Exorcist, The Omen, or The Shining where a talented director took on supernatural material, and made, not just a great horror movie, but a great movie, along the way telling a brand new story about familiar monsters without relying on cliche. (It may also be that three of the four movies mentioned were based on acclaimed novels.)

It was originally recommended that I watch this with the original swedish soundtrack and English subtitles, and not use the terrible English audio overdubbing job, and though I don't like subtitled movies in this case it proved to be good advice.

Two years later the novel was remade for American audience and…

I can't say this obscure 1964 Vincent Price is a truly great movie but it will always have a very special place in my heart. Unlike some of my most esteemed favorites, I wouldn't say it's can't-miss, but at one point Price himself said this was his favorite of all his movies, and George Romero openly cited it as the direct inspiration for founding father of the zombie genre "Night Of The Living Dead" (bet you didn't know there was a "founding grandfather" movie of that genre. "The Last Man On Earth" made it alllllll possible.)

This was based loosely on the 1954 novel "I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson. That's the same "I Am Legend" that "The Omega Man" (with Charlton Heston) and Will Smith's much later action movie were based on.

(This is worth a side note here: Richard Matheson's is a name anyone with more than…

I adore this movie. Well done, old-school humanist, character-driven sci fi. There's like three characters in the whole movie, a lot of talk and very little action, qualities some other quiet "thrillers" I'm particularly fond of (such as The Vast Of Night and The Invitation) share, when they're well-made enough to carry it along on that.

In this, a programmer wins a chance to spend a few days with the reclusive head of his company in his isolated retreat, where it turns out he has built an artificial (and, in some lovely FX work, visually clearly robotic, except for the face) woman. The programmer has been called there to interact with her and determine whether he feels she is genuinely conscious and intelligent. That short synopsis doesn't really do it justice, but to say more would be to rob anyone reading of the experience…

A huge favorite of mine. Nathan Fielder is a "business expert" who comes up with hilarious, incredibly ludicrous, far-fetched ideas to save struggling businesses in this unscripted, quasi-"reality" show.

Just one example off the top of my head: a struggling appliance store is being run out of business by a nearby major chain store. When the chain store advertises that they'll match any advertised price, Fielder advises the appliance store owner to start advertising a certain TV for $1. Then, he'll send people over to buy out that TV from the chain store for $1, and when they're out of stock, his client can raise the price again and resell them in his own store for full price, a 100% profit.

In the kind of complication the show specialized in, somebody noticed that if he advertised the TV for $1, someone might come in and try to buy it for…

What can I say about "Touching The Void"? I'm a sucker for a good survival story, and "Touching The Void" is one of the best of them. It's a true story, the film interspersing dramatizations of real events with interviews with the actual survivors, which is a tactic I ordinarily don't like very much but here is applied to such an incredible true tale that I have no problem with it.

Two mountaineers are climbing in the remote Andes, thirteen miles over rough glacial moraine from their remote base camp, when a storm sets in. Tethered together by a rope, one slips, and dangles over a sheer cliff, suspended hundreds of feet in the air. The other climber, unable to gain secure enough footing to pull him back up, is instead slowly being pulled down towards the edge by the weight. Knowing that if he goes over they will…