Posts Tagged ‘James Cameron’

Deep Blue Sea – A Gruesome Death Delivery System

Posted 03 Oct 2011 — by Ezra Stead
Category Film Reviews, Movies I Got

By Ezra Stead

Deep Blue Sea, USA / Australia, 1999

Directed by Renny Harlin

Deep Blue Sea is little more than a delivery system for gruesome death scenes, but at that it succeeds tremendously. I traditionally spend the entire month of October watching as many “scary movies” as possible, whether they be truly frightening psychological thrillers, big campy monster movies or anything with a flair for the occult. You know, Halloween-type movies. With that tradition firmly in place this year (since, unlike this time last year, I have what can be called a permanent address), I’ve decided to devote this month to actually writing about some of these films, whether new discoveries or old favorites I’ve decided to revisit, perhaps for the sake of finally writing about them. I will not, of course, cover every single movie I watch, but rest assured that for the rest of this month, you will see no reviews of stark, sober dramas or films with undeniably redeeming social value. It’s all chills, thrills, blood, guts and campy dark humor from here on out. My first entry is really more of an action movie, truth be told, but it does feature giant, super-intelligent sharks eating people, so I think it fits right in.

This is what could be called a guilty pleasure movie, from a director who knows how to make them. While he is not consistently as much fun as my personal favorite guilty pleasure director, Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Patriot, 2012), who seems to be intent on destroying the world in nearly every film he makes, Harlin has managed to crank out at least a few enjoyable entertainments, such as Cliffhanger (1993) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996). His 1999 film Deep Blue Sea, like the slasher movies it emulates by way of films like Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and John McTiernan’s Predator (1987), is less a compelling narrative than it is a sort of delivery system for gruesome death scenes. And that’s fine; when a film realizes its goal, however high or low that goal may be, it succeeds. It is in that spirit, then, that I present my loose, irreverent, spoiler-heavy review, in which we shall look at this film in the way it seems to demand: by examining its death scenes. Read More

Water for Elephants – The Greatest Show On Earth

Posted 19 Jul 2011 — by contributor
Category Film Reviews, Movies I Got

By Scott Martin

Water for Elephants, USA, 2011

Directed by Francis Lawrence Water for Elephants is a great movie. And, probably, the best circus movie I've seen.

I remember being a child and watching Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) for the first time. Even then, I was drawn to the idea that a film about a circus can represent so many things – a sense of belonging, people constantly being on the move and on the run, faith, and illusion – but, at the same time, it was a disappointing introduction to circus films. It’s certainly not the one I would make my kids watch first. I’d probably start them off on Steve Miner’s Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken (1991), though that’s more about a fair than a circus; but I digress. After Greatest Show ended, I didn’t feel much; I appreciated the spectacle, but not the people within it. It’s regarded as a great film by most people, but I don’t think so; not even a good film.

Good movies leave you with the sense that they were there, and they give you a pleasant feeling, no matter the content. Great movies, you can touch; that sense of remembrance is tangible, and when the movie is over, you want more. Water for Elephants is a great movie, and probably the best circus movie I’ve seen. Read More

Cave Of Forgotten Dreams

Posted 06 Jun 2011 — by Ezra Stead
Category Film Reviews, Movies I Got

By Ezra Stead

Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Canada / USA / France / Germany / UK, 2010

Written and Directed by Werner Herzog

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is an astonishing new documentary from master filmmaker Werner Herzog.

There is no better filmmaker in existence to have made this film, a document of one of the greatest treasures in human history made by a director who is one of the greatest living legends in cinema history. Werner Herzog, who deftly alternates between fiction and documentary films like no other filmmaker alive (Spike Lee has done fairly well in this regard, too), presents a truly jaw-dropping 3D journey through the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, a cave in southern France that houses some of the oldest known artworks of the human race. Through his necessarily limited exploration of the cave (the crew was allowed to film only four hours a day for one week, and only under the strictest of guidelines) and extensive interviews with various fascinating and eccentric experts, Herzog delves into the mysteries of the beginnings of human consciousness and, by looking deep into the past, ultimately considers the possibilities of the future.

The deep underground cave explored and documented in loving detail by Herzog and his crew of four was discovered in 1994 by Jean-Marie Chauvet (for whom it was named), Eliette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire, who found it by following an air current coming out of the ground. A landslide over 20,000 years ago had sealed the cave, effectively making it a perfect time capsule for the ensuing millennia and keeping its extraordinary artifacts amazingly fresh, which led to suspicions by some that the paintings on the walls were, in fact, a modern hoax. This is briefly addressed in the film, with experts pointing out the layers of calcification over the charcoal lines of the paintings that could only have been produced over thousands of years. The excitement and emotion felt by the many archaeologists, scientists and other experts in various fields is palpable, and the often amazing cinematography makes it infectious.  Read More

Hollywood Repeats Itself – Dark City & The Matrix

Posted 27 May 2011 — by Ezra Stead
Category Essay, Film Reviews, Movies I Got

By Ezra Stead

Dark City, Australia / USA, 1998

Directed by Alex Proyas

The Matrix, USA / Australia, 1999

Written and Directed by The Wachowski Brothers

Dark City is a stunning visual feast, and a fascinating exploration of the nature of reality.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. A cliché, admittedly, but the truth of the aphorism cannot be denied. In the two films we are about to examine, humanity teeters on the brink of disaster in two seemingly disparate space-time continua. The similarities between these two films, however, vastly outweigh the differences. In Alex Proyas’s Dark City (1998), we are presented with a haunting vision of a seemingly familiar world that has actually been fabricated by a group of inhuman creatures that prey on human memories. Sound familiar? It should. One of the most popular films of 1999, Larry and Andy Wachowski’s The Matrix, has a very similar premise, and the similarities extend to specific characters and plot points.

There are differences, of course; mostly financial ones. The Matrix is less opaque, more readily accessible to masses of moviegoers. Its slick, computer-generated special effects are more pleasant to view – if somewhat less visceral – than Dark City‘s gritty, film noir atmosphere of doom and entrapment. Likewise, Matrix‘s villains are ostensibly less sinister (at least, in their guise as government agents) than City‘s bald, pale, trenchcoat-clad “Strangers.” Beneath the disguises, though (the Strangers use human corpses as vessels), the true villains in both films are pretty much the same: slimy, tentacled alien monsters that die when their vessels are destroyed.  Read More

How To Train Your Dragon

Posted 15 Oct 2010 — by Jason A. Hill
Category Animation, Film Industry News, Film Reviews, Movies I Got

By Jason A. Hill

How To Train Your Dragon, USA, 2010

Directed by Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders

hiccup and toothlessToday Dreamworks releases How To Train Your Dragon on DVD and BluRay Disc. The release is highly anticipated due to the film’s underdog success. Its initial opening was a decent one, but its residual and viral attention has made it a hit despite being overshadowed by James Cameron’s Avatar. With 3-D becoming such a phenomenon, some films are going to rely too heavily on this appeal to snare viewers. I feel 3-D is especially effective in animation, where technicians have more control over color and light, which allows Dragon to fire on all cylinders.

How To Train Your Dragon opened strong but seemed to lag in an overly weak box office weekend, finishing just ahead of Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland and Hot Tub Time Machine. The film may have suffered from Dreamworks’ lower than Pixar status because of the enormous success of Up (2009), which was released just a year before and took the film world by storm, becoming the first animated feature nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in the general category. But soon after a lull hit the box office due to lack of any real contenders, How To Train Your Dragon got a second wind via residual viewers, and returned to #1 five weeks later.

It’s taken a while for word to get around about how good this film really is, and I will dare to say it is quite possibly the best 3-D animated film ever made. That’s right, Toy Story, I said “best ever!”  Read More