Flagrantly and with full intention violating my own arbitrary rule against watching R-rated movies for our Film After 11 podcast (at least knowingly so), I decided to introduce one of my sons to John Woo’s blood-soaked action masterpiece The Killer this week. Without spoiling anything, it’s safe to say the kid was an instant fan.… Read More Film After 11 Podcast | The Killer (1989) Including 4K Ultra HD Disc Review
If technically Stanley Kubrick’s second feature film, the director almost entirely disowned his first (1952’s Fear and Desire) and considered Killer’s Kiss to be the start of his filmmaking career. Made when he was just 27-years-old, the noir thriller is clearly a formative work, unpolished and lacking either the intellectual or technical rigor Kubrick would… Read More Kubrick in Progress | Killer’s Kiss (1955) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece 8 ½ is remembered, rightly so, as a defining work of Surrealist cinema. Part of that film’s genius is the way its fantastical elements are rooted in an autobiographical confession for the director’s own personal flaws, self-absorption, and lousy treatment of the women in his life. Attempting at least somewhat of… Read More Perception and Reality Are Two Different Things | Juliet of the Spirits (1965) Criterion Blu-ray
My last excuse for not doing a new Film After 11 podcast episode was that the family and I all went on vacation and had no time to record one, so we ran a rerun instead. I fully expected to come back prepared to watch a new movie with one of my sons and record… Read More Film After 11 Podcast | Ramblings on Ridley Scott + The Martian (2015)
I’ve liked, loved, disliked, or hated countless movies over the years. I’ve felt indifferent to many others. Never before have I had an experience like watching House (or Hausu if you prefer), the 1977 Japanese cult film about a group of annoying teenage girls who get trapped in a haunted or demon-infested mansion. I’m left… Read More It’s Unscientific, Unexplainable, Unnatural, Unreasonable | House (1977) Criterion Blu-ray
Jim Jarmusch might not be the first name one would consider to direct a hitman thriller. In most of his early work, such as Stranger Than Paradise or Mystery Train, the indie auteur established a very laconic style of character drama mostly lacking much in the way of plot or… well… drama. Today, we’d probably… Read More The Poetry of War | Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) Criterion Blu-ray
Hilariously, during an early scene in Brian De Palma’s 1978 supernatural thriller The Fury, a character actually says out loud, “No particular talent is needed to achieve.this.” Wow, could a better summation of the movie exist? That’s it right there. Review over. The end. No, I’ll go on a little if I must. The Fury… Read More Anybody Can Achieve Alpha | The Fury (1978) Blu-ray
In many interviews and talks, Peter Greenaway has declared with some certainty and no small amount of pomposity that narrative and character development are not only inessential, but weaknesses of the cinematic medium. He treats his work not as “movies” in the widely-accepted sense, but as a form of visual art in motion, the sort… Read More A Hundred Is Enough | Drowning by Numbers (1988) 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
I learned a somewhat interesting fact from watching Paul Schrader’s 1982 quasi-remake of Cat People. Actually, I had to look it up afterward. Regardless, now I know that leopards and panthers are the same species, differentiated mainly by color. Perhaps that’s common knowledge to others, but I’d never given it any thought previously, until confused… Read More Kinski Skinski | Cat People (1982) 4K Ultra HD
Ever since the phrase “auteur theory” was coined in the early 1960s, audiences and film connoisseurs who care to notice such things have typically considered a director to be the main artistic guiding force behind any movie. That thought often applies even in retrospect to older films, but wasn’t always the case, especially not during… Read More I Like the Dark, It’s Friendly | Cat People (1942) Criterion Blu-ray
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