Every year Hollywood releases a handful of thrillers that are well-made, good entertainment, but are fairly anonymous. They fill a market for solid mysteries. They can’t scratch the primal itch that makes big time action flicks so reliable at the box office, but they have the benefit of treating their audience like adults, which is nice. Wind River is one of those films. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Wind River, or, Longmire: The Movie”
Tag: Thriller Flick
Shitty Movie Sundays: Geostorm
What a putrid mess of a movie. Geostorm is an action thriller of grand scale, yet dumbed down in an attempt to give it mass appeal. It’s a film full of the promise of spectacle, without a viewer ever having to worry if any of it makes sense. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Geostorm”
Empty Balcony: Atomic Blonde
Atomic Blonde is an aggressive title for a movie. By that, I mean it’s the type of title that can make a viewer immediately prejudge a film. I’m guilty of that. My expectations going into this film were that, at best, it would be a mildly entertaining, yet brainless, action flick. I was hoping for a shitty film, but was prepared for a just a plain old bad one. But, just as one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, the same applies to film titles. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Atomic Blonde”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Freejack
Freejack is one of those movies that potential viewers might remember. They will vaguely remember a time when Emilio Estevez was a leading man, and they might recall that he was in a movie once called Freejack. They probably won’t remember what the movie was about, but they could remember that Mick Jagger, yes, that Mick Jagger, had a role. But, us shitty movie fans, we happy not-so-few, remember this as an ambitious and silly sci-fi action flick. We also remember that not only did Mick Jagger have a prominent part — his gloriously shitty performance stole the film. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Freejack”
October Hammershow: Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell
This is somewhat of a melancholy review for Missile Test. Not only is this the last film of this year’s Horrorshow to be directed by Terence Fisher, it is also the last film he directed, period. He directed films for a quarter of a century, sometimes putting out three or four in a year. Before I began this Horrorshow, I had never heard of Terence Fisher, but what I discovered was a workaday director who could be counted on to helm a film with care, attention to detail, and strong pace. He was in no way innovative, and his films display the difference between craft and art. Terence Fisher was a craftsman, and his trade was directing movies to make his producers money. He was very good at that, and he was very good at keeping me entertained. Continue reading “October Hammershow: Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell”
October Hammershow: Night Creatures, aka Captain Clegg
I feel like American audiences have been sold a false bill of goods with Night Creatures. The title implies quite a different movie than what we got. While today’s film was titled Night Creatures for the American market, its original title in the UK and elsewhere is Captain Clegg. That title isn’t exactly the best, either, as it makes the movie sound like something Disney would have cranked out for kids, and it’s not that.
From 1962, Night Creatures, directed by Peter Graham Scott from a screenplay by Anthony Hinds, is a departure for Hammer. By the time this film was made, Hammer was fully invested in making gothic horror, but Night Creatures is a thriller. It can be painted as a horror flick, however, which is why I feel there’s been a little misdirection involved in promoting it.
In 18th century England, a notorious pirate by the name of Captain Clegg was captured, hanged, and buried in a small coastal town. Ever since then, ghostly phantoms on horseback have plagued the marshes surrounding the town. Many in the town are terrified that such creatures lurk in the wilderness. Where did they come from? What is their purpose? Will anything be done about them? This film sets itself up as horror. But, it’s really about wily townspeople trying to hide their illegal activities from the government. Continue reading “October Hammershow: Night Creatures, aka Captain Clegg”
October Hammershow: Dracula A.D. 1972
There aren’t very many Hammer horror flicks that take place in contemporary times. For this month, only six of the films I’ve watched up to this point take place around the time in which they were filmed. Only one film from the franchise flicks, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, breaks away from its gothic setting. Until now. Continue reading “October Hammershow: Dracula A.D. 1972″
October Hammershow: The Phantom of the Opera (1962)
Hammer’s version of The Phantom of the Opera may not look it at first, but it is a very significant film in the history of cinema. There have been many, many adaptations of Gaston Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra — the most famous being the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical from 1986. But this film, from two and a half decades earlier, was the first Phantom adaptation to feature the phantom playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. That simple decision on the part of the filmmakers to have the phantom banging away on an organ in one scene was the birth of a trope that has crept up in movies, television, and even videogames on a regular basis. Whenever a viewer sees a shadowy figure hunched over an organ and it spits out Bach, it’s all because of this movie. Continue reading “October Hammershow: The Phantom of the Opera (1962)”
October Horrorshow: It Comes at Night, or, Misleading Title: The Movie
Writer/director Trey Edward Shults’ psychological horror flick from this past year, It Comes at Night, is well-written, gorgeously shot, well-acted, and deeply disturbing, but it has a bad title. At first glance, It Comes at Night is a great title for a horror flick. It implies that there is an It that will be coming to terrorize cast members, most probably at night. If this were a monster or a slasher flick, or maybe even something more mysterious, this would be a great title for a film. But in a film that has no It, and which places little meaningful significance on the night, it’s a terrible title. Perhaps Shults had this great title and this great screenplay, and decided to put them together, with little regard to whether or not they were beneficial to each other. Either way, the result is the audience being sold a false bill of goods, which is a shitty thing to do to viewers even if the end result is a good film. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: It Comes at Night, or, Misleading Title: The Movie”
October Hammershow: The Horror of Frankenstein
So long, Peter Cushing! After five films over 12 years, Hammer decided to go in a different direction with 1970’s The Horror of Frankenstein, replacing the iconic, and aging, Cushing with Ralph Bates, who was an entire generation younger. Hammer also decided not to continue the jumbled and confused continuity of the previous films, going for a complete reboot of the franchise. That phrase, ‘reboot of the franchise,’ is decidedly anachronistic when applied to a film from almost fifty years ago, but it is an accurate description of what Hammer did. It’s just a new term for a practice as old as film itself. Continue reading “October Hammershow: The Horror of Frankenstein”