Oculus is a horror movie about a killer mirror that kills people, with death.
It jumps back and forth between an adult brother and sister investigating it in the present day and their earlier childhood experiences with its misdeeds, when it terrorized their family.
Part of an ongoing effort to watch each of the films in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies series. The introduction and full list can be found here.
“It is a tale of temple bells, sounding at sunset before the image of Buddha; it is a tale of love and lovers; and it is a tale of tears.”
So begins Broken Blossoms.
Part of an ongoing effort to watch each of the films in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies series. The introduction and full list can be found here.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” - William Faulkner
It’s hard to figure out how to approach The Birth of a Nation, released 100 years ago this month.
“In the event that find certain sequences or ideas disturbing, please bear in mind that this is your fault, not ours. You will need to see the picture again and again, until you understand everything.”
This delightfully caustic warning, uttered by director/star Steven Soderbergh in the first moments of the film, sets the tone for Schizopolis.
Part of an ongoing effort to watch each of the films in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies series. The introduction and full list can be found here.
“A text could be written about the impact of Pastrone’s experiments in lighting and camera movement, decisive in freeing the movies from the proscenium.”~ Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times (quoted at the beginning of Kino Video’s restored Cabiria)
“Proscenium” is a word I was unfamiliar with when it appeared on the screen during my first viewing of Cabiria.
So, now that the awards season is blissfully over, let’s talk about some other movies. Specifically, 370 of them.
After watching Steve James’ remarkable documentary Life Itself (excuse me while I go weep), I got to thinking about Roger Ebert.
And the rest of the business for the Oscars. First part’s here; second part’s here.
Best Visual Effects
Will win – Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
I could see this going to either Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Interstellar instead, but Dawn of the Planet of the Apes features significantly more horseback-riding apes firing machine guns, always the “x factor” in decisions like these.
Let’s start from a generally uncontroversial place: The Oscars are nonsense. Just utter bullshit. We are idiots for paying a single moment of attention to them.
And yet. Like many goofballs, I can’t turn away. It’s like playing craps in one of the less reputable Vegas casinos, in downtown rather than on the Strip.
2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, an enormously fun action movie that doubles as a clever riff on videogame motifs (a fact self-consciously indicated by its tagline: “Live. Die. Repeat.”) was one of the year’s biggest and best surprises, even if The Onion kind of got to it first.
