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Posts Tagged ‘Takashi Miike’

Ezra’s Spooktober 2015

Posted 28 Oct 2015 — by Ezra Stead
Category Essay, Film Reviews

By Ezra Stead

I’ve decided not to get quite so carried away this time around, but as I said last year, October is my favorite month. Since I tend to watch a lot of horror movies year-round, in October I feel like I have to do something special, so I try to watch almost exclusively horror movies. I watched (or, in many cases, re-watched) a total of 22 before starting this article, and I’m far from finished. In the interest of actually recommending some movies before Halloween, I’m putting this out now, and in the interest of brevity, I’m cutting it down to ten recommendations, grouped together as double features (even though their availability varies a bit). Not all are horror movies, exactly, but I think you’ll agree they’re all on-theme for the season. Enjoy! Read More

Tags: '80s horror, A Nightmare on Elm Street, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Fredy's Revenge, Adam DeVine, American-International Pictures, Angela Trimbur, Angelica Huston, Audition, Barry Sonnenfeld, Christina Ricci, Christopher Lloyd, David Cronenberg, Desperado, Dreams in the Witch-House, Edgar Allan Poe, ER, Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th, From Dusk Till Dawn, Full Metal Jacket, George Clooney, Gozu, Greg Nicotero, H.P. Lovecraft, Harvey Keitel, Henri-Georges Clouzot, horror, horror film, horror films, Howard Berger, Hush... Hush Sweet Charlotte, Ichi the Killer, In the Mouth of Madness, Jeffrey Combs, John Carpenter, John Carpenter's The Thing, Jurgen Prochnow, Kurt Neumann, Les Diaboliques, Malin Ackerman, Mark Patton, Masters of Horror, Premature Burial, Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino, Raul Julia, Re-Animator, Robert Aldrich, Robert Rodriguez, Rodney Ascher, Roger Corman, Room 237, Salem's Lot, Sam Neill, Scream Queen: My Nightmare on Elm Street, stanley kubrick, Stephen King, Stuart Gordon, Taissa Farmiga, Takashi Miike, The Addams Family, The Cabin in the Woods, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Final Girls, The Fly, The Nightmare, The Walking Dead, Thomas Middleditch, Todd Strauss-Schulson, Tyler Jensen, Vincent Price, Wes Craven, Yakuza, Yakuza Apocalypse

Ezra’s Top 10 Favorite Films Of 2011

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Posted 01 Jul 2012 — by Ezra Stead
Category Essay, Film Reviews, Movies I Got

By Ezra Stead

Well, it’s that time once again, and as always, I didn’t get around to a lot of the films I would have liked to see – as I write this, a DVD of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris sits on my desk, glaring at me – but there comes a time when every movie lover has to call it a year. I have somewhat arbitrarily picked today as that time, so here now are my top 10 favorite films of 2011:

# 10) MELANCHOLIA – anyone with whom I talk movies already knows how much I love Lars von Trier, and though this is definitely not my favorite of his films (2003’s Dogville still takes that honor), it is nonetheless a striking and powerful depiction of the nature of depression, as well as a highly unusual and compelling look at what the impending apocalypse might feel like. The stunning opening and closing sequences alone make this film impossible to ignore, or to forget. Read More

Tags: 13 Assassins, A Separation, Abbas Kiarostami, Academy Award, action film, akira kurosawa, Albert Brooks, Ali-Asghar Shahbazi, All About Eve, Amelie, Asghar Farhadi, Audrey Tautou, Berenice Bejo, Best Picture award, brad pitt, Breaking Bad, Bronson, Bruce Greenwood, Bryan Cranston, Carey Mulligan, Certified Copy, Charles Manson, Christina Hendricks, comedy, comedy film, documentary, Dogville, Drive, Elizabeth Olsen, Ezra Stead, film, film review, film reviews, filmmaking, Gangs of New York, Guillaume Schiffman, hollywood, Hunter McCracken, Japanese Cinema, Japanese Film, Jean Dujardin, Jessica Chastain, John Hawkes, Jonestown, Juliette Binoche, Kelly Reichardt, Kevin McDonald, Lars von Trier, Leila Hatami, Life in a Day, Mad Men, Martha Marcy May Marlene, martin scorsese, Meek's Cutoff, Melancholia, Michel Hazanavicius, Michelle Williams, Midnight in Paris, Minnesota, movie, movie review, movies, New York, Nicolas Winding Refn, No Country for Old Men, oscar, Oscar nomination, Peyman Maadi, Ridley Scott, Rod Rondeaux, Ron Perlman, Ryan Gosling, Sareh Bayat, science fiction, Sean Durkin, Singin' in the Rain, Stephen Meek, Takashi Miike, Terrence Malick, Texas, The Artist, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, The Last King of Scotland, The Tree of Life, the Up series, there will be blood, Touching the Void, Valhalla Rising, westerns, William Shimell, Woody Allen

Gorgeous Camp, Campy Gore – Three Films By Dario Argento

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Posted 14 Oct 2011 — by Ezra Stead
Category Film Reviews, Movies I Got

By Ezra Stead

The Phantom of the Opera, Italy, 1998

Jenifer, USA, 2005

Pelts, Canada / USA, 2006

Directed by Dario Argento

Italian filmmaker Dario Argento is widely known among horror fans as a distinctive, sadistic auteur, a director who has found beauty in terror and mutilation with films such as Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and Opera (1987). It is often forgotten that he also helped write one of the greatest Westerns of all time, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), but that makes sense, as he has devoted his career as a director to the creepily atmospheric and macabre, delighting in tales of the supernatural and visions of brutal but creative murder. Suspiria is generally considered to be his masterpiece (and it is certainly one of the prettiest horror films I’ve ever seen) and I actually like Opera even more in many ways, but this entry in my ongoing Halloween Movie Month (HMM … yeah, I like that acronym better) series will focus on three newer films with which I recently caught up, including his two contributions to Mick Garris’s always intriguing Masters of Horror series. Read More

Tags: Asia Argento, Bruce Jones, Carrie Anne Fleming, Cigarette Burns, Dario Argento, Desperation, Ellen Ewusie, Excalibur, Ezra Stead, film, film review, film reviews, filmmaking, Gaston Leroux, Gerard Butler, Gregory Nicotero, horror, horror film, horror films, Howard Berger, Imprint, Inferno, Italian film, Italian horror, Jenifer, Joel Schumacher, John Boorman, John Carpenter, Julian Sands, Katrine Boorman, Kevin Crofton, Lon Chaney, M. Night Shyamalan, Masters of Horror, Meat Loaf, Meat Loaf Aday, melodrama, Mick Garris, movie, movie review, movies, musical, New York, Once Upon a Time in the West, Opera, Paris, Pelts, Sergio Leone, Stephen King, Steven Weber, Suspiria, Takashi Miike, Tales from the Crypt, television, television film, The Happening, The Phantom of the Opera, The Stand, westerns

13 Assassins

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Posted 08 May 2011 — by Ezra Stead
Category Film Reviews, Movies I Got

By Ezra SteadÂ

13 Assassins, Japan / UK, 2010

Directed by Takashi Miike

This movie kicks mountains of ass! From the opening scene, which depicts the ancient Japanese ritual suicide method known as harakiri or seppuku, Japanese provocateur Takashi Miike’s latest film is clearly not screwing around. The opening scene is a textbook case of the effectiveness of sound design in film: we are mercifully spared the visual details of the disgraced samurai slicing open his own belly with his sword, instead focusing on a long take of his agonized face with the hideous squelching sounds of the violent act filling the soundtrack, an effect that is arguably even worse than onscreen violence. I remember being surprised to hear that the latest film from Miike (Audition, Gozu) managed to get an R-rating, and the fifteen minutes cut from the original Japanese release for the international version probably accounts for this, but I have little doubt that this scene has been presented exactly as Miike intended. It is a brutal beginning to an extremely violent film, a scene that really lets the audience know what it is in for.

Tags: 13 Assassins, akira kurosawa, Audition, Ezra Stead, film, filmmaking, Goro Inagaki, Gozu, harakiri, Heath Ledger, Ichi the Killer, Japanese Cinema, Japanese Film, Koji Yakusho, movies, Sam Peckinpah, seppuku, seven samurai, stanley kubrick, Tadanobu Asano, Takashi Miike, Takayuki Yamada, The Dark Knight, The Hidden Fortress, The Shining, The Wild Bunch, Toshiro Mifune, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Yusuke Iseya

Posts Tagged ‘Takashi Miike’

Ezra’s Spooktober 2015

Ezra’s Top 10 Favorite Films Of 2011

Gorgeous Camp, Campy Gore – Three Films By Dario Argento

13 Assassins

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