Thoughts on movies, comic books, life, and other nonsense, by someone who should know better
I don’t recall exactly why I wanted to see Bone Tomahawk – despite seeing some great movies in the genre, I’ve never been a huge fan of Westerns. For me, they work better when the genre is used as a backdrop for less conventional stories (The Hateful Eight and The Revenant are two good examples), so it’s entirely possible that the words “horror” and “cannibals” are what pushed me over. It also has Kurt Russell in it, an actor I always enjoy watching.
The Purge, written and directed by James DeMonaco, is a pretty silly premise – that for twelve hours one night of the week all crime including murder is legal (except for some notable exceptions, like some elected officials). The movie posits that at some time in the immediate future there’s a sweeping, drastic overhaul of the US Government, so that by 2022 crime has been significantly reduced by means of this annual release of pent up negative emotions, etc. It’s a horror movie premise that doesn’t have any root in reality whatsoever.
Spurred on by Spring, one of the best movies I’ve watched recently, I wanted to see if it marked an evolution in form and style on the part of moviemakers Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson by catching up on their 2012 feature debut Resolution. Ostensibly billed as a “horror” movie, it has less in common with the genre than that – it’s more of a mystery movie than anything else, and it’s a good one. Unfortunately, both movie posters I’ve seen (including the one I chose) do the movie a huge disservice. Continue reading “Movie Review: RESOLUTION”
About ten minutes into Filth (written and directed by Jon S. Baird, from the novel by Irvine Welsh), I was on the verge of deciding that I hated it. I knew exactly why I was feeling like this: I absolutely loathed the central character, played by James McAvoy (X-Men: Apocalypse), and I felt that the entire production was trying way too hard to capture the vibe of that other Irvine Welsh adaptation. Even though I’d read the book about 14 or 15 years ago (Jesus,really?) and knew the major reveal, I went in not fully comprehending how much I could hate a fictional character. And not only that, Bruce Robertson was being played by the faun from Narnia!
It’s not often that a movie comes along and creates its own genre. Spring, written by Justin Benson and directed by Benson and Aaron Moorhead (who also created the Bonestorm segment of V/H/S Viral, actually does just that: RomHor! Does that sound dumb or overhyped? Probably both, but I feel it’s true. I’ve seen many a romantic drama, and many a horror movie, and this is absolutely a successful fusion of both in that neither element feels half assed. The movie poster describes it as Richard Linklater meets HP Lovecraft – not a terrible mashup, but not completely accurate, to me anyway. This is clearly the movie that Benson and Moorhead set out to make, and I mostly liked it.
AT THE FOOTHILLS OF MADNESS 