“You can hide from your past, but you can never erase it.” With that simple tagline, it becomes clear that The Big Picture is a movie we’ve seen before: a successful man does something unspeakable, and spends a good deal of time trying to bury his transgression. It is unfortunate that director Eric Lartigau, who […]
Chungking Express In The Framework of Classical Hollywood Structure
Here is an academic piece I wrote on how Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express fits into film expert David Bordwell’s definition of classical Hollywood structure. For reference, here is his direct quote from p. 74 of Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art: An Introduction: Hollywood plots consist of clear chains of causes and effects, […]
Argo
Ben Affleck has had a strange career. As far back as his early films with Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), he’s taken a lot of flack for his acting. But the moment he got behind the camera with Gone Baby Gone, audiences and critics put away their complaints as they […]
Who Is The Master?
I have heard several different evaluations from my peers of Paul Thomas Anderson’s most recent film, The Master; from staunch support to outright dismissal, opinions certainly seem divided. But as someone who was not anticipating The Master with any great excitement, I came away pleasantly surprised. Because of this, I feel that I should illustrate why the film deserves a […]
Looper
I feel it is only fair to warn you that there are very light spoilers for Looper in the review below. I have seen the movie and can assure you they are absolutely far from important given how complex the film is, but if you’re one of those people who wants to go into the movie completely fresh, I […]
Seven Psychopaths
The McDonagh family has some serious talent. Both Martin, the writer/director of In Bruges, and his brother John Michael McDonagh, writer/director of The Guard, have produced two of the best dark comedies of the 21st century. Martin in particular feels in many ways like a subtler, more poignant Tarantino, combining morbid violence with ingenious dialogue and meaningful emotion. […]
The Master
Paul Thomas Anderson is a director who thrives on being pensive. This, unfortunately, tends to clash with his directorial style. His stories often feel like twigs strewn across a body of water, loosely tied together by vague ideas and tangential connections. Sometimes that underlying body of water is a puddle, shallow and superficial, while at […]
Movie Fail is Moving On Up
Hello all, You may have noticed that Movie Fail Reviews was down today for some temporary maintenance. There’s a reason for that: we have officially made the jump from moviefail.wordpress.com to moviefail.com. According to our calculations, this means you will be typing 10 less characters per URL entry – leaving you with just enough time […]
Dredd
I confess that I am not intimately familiar with John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s Judge Dredd comics, nor did I have the privilege of experiencing the so-bad-it’s-good Judge Dredd starring Sly Stallone that came out in 1995. Because of this, I was completely ambivalent about the fact that Judge Dredd was getting a reboot. And yet, even as […]
Nausicaä of the Desert of the Real
This piece examines the thematic relationship between Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and the Wachowski siblings’ The Matrix. Needles to say, beware of spoilers. In 1984, one year before the founding of the legendary Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki’s first major directorial effort was released. Nausicaä of the Valley of […]
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