Is it that typical for a director to get better with age? A director whose best films clearly appear toward the end of his life? When I think about the filmographies of all my favorite directors, it’s really never the case. Most of my favorite filmmakers, who are fairly old or dead by now, made their best films early on or mid-way through their careers, and rarely peaked toward the end. My favorite director Alfred Hitchcock worked from the mid 1920’s to the mid 1970’s, fifty years of cinema bliss. His finest films were definitely in his later half, with that golden time between 1951 and 1963.

But Hitchcock’s last four films are hit and miss, and maybe the least interesting of his entire career. There’s Spielberg, who made his best films in the 70’s, with some exceptions (including Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan). Billy Wilder? By far the first half of his career was better than his second. And my horror guys-Carpenter, Craven, Romero, and De Palma-have delivered nothing but mediocrity for the last decade. Only Cronenberg has had a late-career renaissance with A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. So it’s with great pleasure to report that Clint Eastwood’s finest work is coming at the end of his career (more…)

A strange, sometimes brilliant, and oftentimes very slow new film from director Paul Schrader entitled Adam Resurrected is a movie that left me bewildered and a little bit disappointed. It was a magical night, seeing this movie at the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival earlier this month. Taking my friend Katie to the Los Angeles premiere of the movie, I was hopeful and excited that Mr. Jeff Goldblum himself would be in attendance. I just love the guy. Going back as far as The Big Chill, Goldblum has been a major influence in my life. His ingenious work in David Cronenberg’s The Fly is one of the all-time great horror movie performances. Growing up both Jurassic Park and Independence Day were two big summer blockbusters that definitely left giant imprints on me as a younger guy. Goldblum is just one of those actors that is always interesting, no matter the role or film. This decade he has popped up in things here and there, like Cats & Dogs, The Life Aquatic, and Fay Grim, an indie Parker Poser flick that I’ve been meaning to check out. Finally, in 2008, someone has given Goldblum a big huge complex and maddening starring role with Adam Resurrected. And Goldblum does everything he can with it (more…)

As much as special effects have progressed in the last fifty years, there is still an undying charm to classic special effects of the 50’s and 60’s that will never cease to entertain. Watching the fun-filled Jason the Argonauts recently with a couple friends was a blast from beginning to end. The plot, which takes elements from Greek folklore and allows for a man named Jason to search for the Golden Fleece in order to claim his thrown as King of Thessaly, is essentially an excuse for one special effects sequence after another. We get some real gems, like a 100-foot bronze giant and a massive venomous creature with its head filled with seven deadly snakes. The movie may be most famous for its finale that features a huge army of skeletons, but those special effects are the ones that have aged the weakest. No matter; special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, who has been praised so much for his work on this movie that some may believe him to be the film’s director (who is actually Don Chaffey), proves himself to be ahead of his time. My favorite special effect in the movie is one of the more practical (more…)

While not the worst of the twenty-two James Bond movies, Quantum of Solace may have the “special” distinction for being the least interesting. Despite a couple semi-exciting action scenes and another good performance from Daniel Craig as Bond, this movie leaves absolutely zero impression. When Casino Royale ended, I was ecstatic at where this series could go. When this ended, I didn’t even care what the next movie would bring. There have been lackluster Bond movies over the years, but never in the history of the series has there been such a decline in quality from the first film to the next. Imagine if Christopher Nolan had fucked up The Dark Knight? That’s exactly what director Marc Forster does here. What a shame.

It’s almost a bit unfair that Quantum of Solace had to come after Casino Royale because while Casino Royale worked in almost every possible way, with a startling debut performance from Craig as Bond, insanely innovative and exciting action pieces, a magnificent Bond girl, a terrifying and original villain, and a love story that brought new dimensions to the character of James Bond, Quantum of Solace offers almost nothing to get excited about (more…)

SEE THIS MOVIE. I’m going to keep this review short and sweet because the less you know going into Slumdog Millionaire the better. I won’t divulge any major plot points or surprises. I walked into this picture at the AFI International Los Angeles Film Festival last week knowing nothing about it except that it was directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Sunshine) and that it had been receiving rave reviews at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals. I walked out of the theatre shaking and exuberated with joy. Movies are rarely this exciting, this ambitious, and this alive. Even the stunning end credits crackle with ingenuity. All you need to know about Slumdog Millionaire is that the film tells a coming-of-age story about a kid from the slums of Mumbai named Jamal who grows up through hard times (more…)

For those who think Saw V and The Haunting of Molly Hartley are the only new horror movies available to see this Halloween season, I ask you all to dig a bit deeper. First, go to your local video store or your Netflix queue and rent a 2007 French horror film entitled Inside. It’s the best horror film I’ve seen since The Descent, and a must-watch for genre fans. If you’ve taken a look at that movie, and you still have a craving for something scary, try searching at your local theatres for the menacing indie film Splinter. Can’t find it? You’re not alone. While the annual Saw movies still manage 30+ million opening weekends, a classy and original movie like Splinter barely even gets a theatrical release. It’s a sad day for genre fans when they can’t see a movie like this on the big screen, because Splinter is actually really scary! I saw the film at Screamfest in mid-October and enjoyed it immensely, especially with such a loud and large croud for its Los Angeles premiere. I actually have a relation to the movie, as I know some people who worked on it, and I was even offered a production assistant job that I unfortunately wasn’t able to take. A year and a half later the movie is finally completed, and I must say I’m ecstatic about the results (more…)

What a strange, surreal, and somewhat irrelevant movie this is. While entertaining from beginning to end, and featuring an outstanding performance by Josh Brolin, the movie feels so… I don’t know… last millennium… now in the wake of President-Elect Barack Obama. When I saw this movie three weeks ago, we lived in a different world. Now, looking back on the movie is like looking back on the last eight years. It’s time for the past to become the past! But it’s not fair to be judgmental on the merits of Oliver Stone’s movie. It’s a sweeping biopic, filled with powerful moments, terrific performances, and sharp jabs at a President who in reality is treated more than fairly in this film. This film could’ve (easily) been a two-hour condemnation of the Bush years, but Stone wisely tries to delve into the material with more of an open mind, delegating more of the blame to those around Bush than the man himself. While Bush has to take some of the blame, there was probably more influence on him that we’ll ever realize, both before his two terms in office and during those tumultuous eight years (with two more months still to go!) (more…)

There are two halves to Eagle Eye, the new movie that teams Shia LaBouef with his Disturbia director D.J. Caruso. The first half is a genuinely exciting piece of mainstream entertainment that takes one of my favorite plots - the innocent man wrongly accused - and updates it to the new millennium with a technology-driven story that suggests we as human beings are being watched at all times. It really is a chilling idea. The thought that because of all the new technology we are constantly being supervised and that, at every moment of our lives, our whereabouts are known. The movie takes this idea and runs with it for a good hour or so, taking very few false moves along the way. Caruso has given LaBouef another solid vehicle, as Eagle Eye offers LaBouef’s best work yet. Caruso was also smart in pairing him up with one of the best younger actresses around today - Michelle Monaghan - as the two have a weirdly effective chemistry together. After a necessary slow set-up, we’re thrown into an action sequence of LaBouef’s character escaping a holding room that lasts at least twenty minutes or so and is by far the best stuff in the movie. However, as the movie leads into its second half, introducing more material with a somewhat pointless character played by (more…)

I don’t have a whole lot of heroes from the writing world of motion pictures, as often they are writer-directors (Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Craven) and just simply directors (Alfred Hitchcock and John Carpenter). But back in 1999, when I settled down in my uncomfortable chair in the third row at the Park Lane 16 cineplex in Reno, Nevada, I witnessed a new hero on screen. I had never heard of him before. I knew nothing of his background. But at the end, I wanted to get up and cheer at the sight of his name. Alan Ball.

Alan Ball? Who? Who the hell was this guy? I went home and looked him up on the Internet. All he had really done before American Beauty (his first produced screenplay) was some writing work on television shows like Cybill and Roseanne. Apparently Ball would spend his long days working on these dreadful TV shows, then go home at night and dive into his script for American Beauty. Thank God he did. During those nights he crafted one of the finest screenplays ever conceived, and the finished film turned out to be better than he or probably anyone ever could have imagined (more…)

It’s rare the day that I see a new horror film, particularly an older one, that I fall in love with, but such is the case with a very low-budget, very strange, very surreal little movie called Carnival of Souls. Directed by Herk Harvey (who had previously only made industrial short films), the movie tells of a young woman who apparently survives a car crash, then starts to have visions of a ghost as she moves on with her life in a now town where she takes a job as a church organist. Time and space seem to spiral out of control at moments when people start to ignore that she exists and she becomes drawn to an isolated, abandoned carnival. I knew about ten minutes into the movie that I had stumbled upon something special, and I knew by the end that I had just witnessed an instant classic. A much more famous horror film from the 1960’s is the black-and-white ultra-low-budget Night of the Living Dead, directed by George A. Romero and released in 1968, but Carnival of Souls has a ton of the same qualities (in terms of the tone, look, and, yes, mediocre acting) and was released a whopping six years earlier (more…)