Review of Shutter Island

My review of Shutter Island is up at Sf Signal.

At first glance, Shutter Island would seem an odd movie to review for a science fiction site. It opens as a noir thriller, with homage to such movies as Out of the Past, In a Lonely Place and The Big Combo, and is set in 1954, at a time when the House Un-American Activities Committee whipped up anti-Communist paranoia. However, little screen time elapses before one realizes that the noir elements in fact share space with three other genres: Gothic, haunted house story and existential horror movie, with twists and reversals reaching frantic levels as it spin towards its climax.

So it's a genre picture, and a good one at that.

More...

My Review of Joe Johnston's "The Wolfman"

I have become one of the SF Signal Irregulars, and my first review for them, of Joe Johnston's The Wolfman, is up and running:

Since 1992, filmmakers of varying degrees of talent and ability have attempted to revive, if not truly remake, the monster movies produced by Universal Pictures during the 1930s. Francis Ford Coppola did it well by pulling out all the cinematic stops with Bram Stoker's Dracula. Kenneth Branagh did it badly with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Stephen Somers did it really badly by attempting to reinvigorate the monster mashups of the 1940s with Van Helsing. (I'm leaving out The Mummy, of course, but since there's so little of the original in Somers's remake I can hardly compare the two. It would be like comparing apples to chum.) Now Joe Johnston, director of such cinematic trifles as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer and Jumanji, has decided to have a go at The Wolfman, with results that are as ephemeral as his previous work.

More here...

And Here's Mine: A Review of "The Fourth Kind"

My review of The Fourth Kind is up at Revolution SF, and it isn't pretty.

The aliens are here, and they're abducting unwary individuals in Nome, Alaska. So asserts director Olatunde Osunsanmi's The Fourth Kind, which attempts to take the concept of alien visitation and abduction into the mockumentary territory inhabited by The Blair Witch Project (the first horror movie to stake claim), Cloverfield and the recent Paranormal Activity.

But it has two specific differences: (1) unlike the aforementioned films, The Fourth Kind purports to be based on actual events, backed up by documentary evidence used during the movie itself; and (2) unlike the aforementioned films, it has nothing to recommend it beyond its premise or its dubious assertions.

Read the rest of the trainwreck here.


(Milla Jovovich, looking shocked at my review of her performance.)

Bladerunner 2

Not just no, but hell no.

This weekend I received an e-mail from /Film reader Tanner C. informing me that one of the screenwriters of Eagle Eye was working on a screenplay for Blade Runner 2. I spent the weekend trying to get confirmation, and thanks to my friend Frosty at Collider who was able to get in touch with a second person who was also at the event, I was able to confirm that the following was actually said. But before you throw a hissy fit. let me fill you in on all the details and assure you that nothing is being developed by the studio itself, or with the studio’s involvement.

Although I disagree with the article's author -- I don't believe Bladerunner is perfect -- it remains one of my top three all-time favorite movies in any genre. For all its faults, it remains a visionary work no matter the version, and one of the movies that had the biggest impact on me. The very thought that someone would even attempt a sequel makes me want to bellow with rage.

Animated Opinions

The latest issue of The Austin Chronicle contains my feature on the unique internet movie review site, Spill.

Like most weeks over the past six years, Martin Thomas, C. Robert Cargill, Chris Cox, and Korey Coleman gather to record their movie discussions. But now, instead of weekly Austin cable-access show The Reel Deal, they bring their act – equal parts critique, comedy troupe, and sideshow – to the Internet as a series of animated shorts under the moniker Spill.

Continued...

Unlikely Movie Scientists (WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 15.10)

We've actually discussed this topic at several of our meetings and I know we all agree on number one!







Denise Richards, The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Her character's name is bad enough: Jones, Christmas Jones. But it requires a quantum leap in logic to buy the scantily clad, blank-faced Richards as a nuclear physicist.

Check out the rest of the list!

Edelman on The Bourne Paranoia

Fascinating post on David Louis Edelman's blog about the Bourne movies, which he calls "the most intelligent, well-crafted, thoughtful thrillers about American paranoia" that he's ever seen.

I just don’t believe this paranoid worldview is sustainable. And director Paul Greengrass doesn’t either. Like Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart or Irving’s Headless Horseman, these things come back to haunt us. And for Greengrass, in The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, that Headless Horseman is Jason Bourne.

Notice the look of fear in the eyes of the various intelligence impresarios that Bourne runs across (played ably by Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Joan Allen, and David Straitharn). Bourne isn’t just a renegade spy; he’s the twitch of conscience that you feel in the middle of the night, he’s the thing that haunts you after you’ve just violated international law in the name of the United States of America. Soil the Constitution, and Jason Bourne will get you.

(snip)

When does the American paranoia end? And who will stand up and apologize once it’s over?

Good question, Dave.

Go read.

Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time

The method of ranking the movies by using both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB ratings created an interesting and fairly thorough list. While I have some quibbles with some of the rankings, overall it's fascinating reading.

(Thanks again to Bill Crider and his amazing Pop Culture Magazine.)