78/52 (2017)
Watched On: NETFLIX AU
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 3.6/5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 7.3/10
My Review: Imagine if you were one of the interviewees on this and didn’t have anything interesting to say about the shower scene.
12 Angry Men (1957)
Watched On: Stan Australia
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 4.5/5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 8.9/10
The Fog (1980)
Watched On: Blu-Ray (Carpenter Cult Classics Edition)
Score: ⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Score: 3.5/5
Avg. iMDB Score: 6.8/10
My Review: The signature Carpenter cinematography and colour boost it a bit, as do a few genuinely scary scenes and striking imagery, and it’s never boring, but The Fog really suffers from a meandering plot and stiff characters matched by equally wooden acting. For a movie that spends so long jumping between different townsfolk, I never felt much of a connection to any of them, or a geographical or spiritual understanding of the town itself. It’s very short but it wastes so much time, and, once we do get to the admittedly well-shot finale, the ending is hardly satisfying. Still, that scene on the boat near the start elevates above the mediocre film it’s a part of to become a truly great horror sequence. There’s lots of Carpenter and co.’s potential brimming just under the surface, but it is still under the surface. Watch The Thing instead.
Rashomon (1950)
Watched On: DVD (Criterion Collection)
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 4.2/10
Avg. iMDB Rating: 8.3/10
My Review: Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon is a rumination on sin, life and death (with some gender politics thrown in as well). Despite a weak first act that definitely dragged along a little (just lots of shots of people walking/running through the forest), once the film hits it’s stride, it’s fantastic. Kurosawa crafts an ambiguous storyline that introduces several distinctive, memorable characters, with intense, well-choreographed fight scenes and several moments that resonated with me on an emotional level. The editing was also on point, and the film has some really nice camerawork that makes good use of pans, composition and symmetry. Definitely worth a watch.
Django Unchained (2012)
Watched On: Blu-Ray (Standard Edition)
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 4.1/5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 8.4/10
My Review: Quentin Tarantino’s revenge fantasy epic is fantastic. It’s got great performances from Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington and especially Christoph Waltz, who is consistently charismatic and hilarious. The screenplay by Tarantino is perfectly paced, engaging and often hilarious (the comedic highlight for me was the bag scene), and his direction showcases his skills in composition and lighting. I usually hate crash zooms because I associate them with mid-2000s studio comedies, but they lend Django a style that sets it apart from the other twenty-first century attempts to revive the Western genre. It’s the first film I’ve seen from Tarantino and he lives up to what I had thought might be impossible expectations. The editing is also very effective. I appreciated the efforts to emulate the spaghetti westerns of old such as the Leone-like font in the opening and closing titles and the score. The film also blends in some anachronistic modern songs in a way that surprisingly works. If anything, it enhances the story’s timeless themes of racial tolerance (at least, racial issues through the heightened reality of Tarantino). For a nearly three hour movie, it goes by at a good pace. You definitely feel the length, but it never bored me. Also, as an Australian, it amused me that Tarantino’s cameo character was, too. Surprisingly, he pulls off a pretty accurate accent and speech pattern. I’ve heard people say he’s a bad actor, but he was alright here. I guess I might see that as I go through his filmography eventually.
Escape From New York (1981)
Watched On: Blu-Ray (Carpenter Cult Classics Edition)
Score: ⭐⭐⭐1/2
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 3.7/5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 7.2/10
My Review: John Carpenter's Escape From New York is a good movie with a great concept. Not only is the premise of the film so enticing, there's also a lot of commentary to be mined from it (especially in these days, as the emphasis on preventing terrorism paired with the growing advantages of technology leave some people feeling the governments of the world are compromising their civil liberties for the sake of security). The movie mostly ignores the latter aspect, but you're still left with a stylish dystopian action movie. There's nothing too special here; Carpenter's signature use of colour is present but his usual above-average cinematography isn't, all of the performances (apart from a very memorable henchman character) are fine, some of the effects have aged better than others, and most of the cool original ideas are used up by the end of the first act. However, the movie is definitely more than the sum of it's parts, and although the storyline is fairly generic past the premise, the film leaves enough of a taste that I think it will be memorable in my mind and entice me to revisit it one day.
I'm enjoying going through selected movies from this writer/director's filmography and seeing his growth. This is undoubtedly a more solid effort than his preceding film, The Fog, but it does not quite reach the heights that that film had hidden amongst it's lows. This is the second of three movies in my mini Carpenter watchthrough, and for the next one I'll be backtracking a little bit to see what is arguably his most famous work, a horror film set in Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night.
Halloween (1978)
Watched On: DVD (from the Halloween 1 - 5 Collection)
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 4/5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 7.8/10
My Review: Halloween pretty much shows you exactly what’s wrong with horror movies today. Hitchcock once said that (I’m paraphrasing) in a movie, if you put a bomb under a table and it blows up unexpectedly, that’s a shock, but if you show the audience that there’s a bomb under the table and tell them that it will go off in five minutes, that’s suspense. So many movies these days value shock over real suspense (especially due to the current popularity of jumpscares).
Look how suspenseful this movie is, with all it’s slow tracking shots and times when Michael Myers approaches from the background. That bit where Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) collapses against a dark doorway and Myers’ white mask slowly comes into the light next to her is bloody nightmare fuel. I could never say that about a jumpscare in last year’s instalment of this franchise.
It’s also fantastically atmospheric and goes to show how it created the slasher formula and everybody else stole it and made lesser versions. It’s easy to forget how much time the film spends with each character before killing them off. The kills are, if not emotional, much more shocking than if we’d just been introduced to them. Characters also have realistic reactions to these murders. Michael Myers (or The Shape, as the movie credits him) is actually pretty scary in this one. He’s a lot faster and more agile than later films in the series would have you believe. The effect of keeping him in shadows and obscuring his mask makes him a lot more mysterious. There’s never a big reveal moment for his full appearance, because the characters never have a moment to catch their breath.
If there’s one negative I have, some of the other teen’s acting is.... meh. This usually happens in these sort of movies, because the director usually puts much more effort into casting the main lead than the side characters (see also Split).
It’s pretty amazing that I can give a movie five stars but not call it my favourite of that director’s (The Thing is proving hard to beat). Very few directors have scored more than one five star rating from me (off the top of my head I can only think of Hitchcock, Spielberg, Nolan and Zemeckis), and John Carpenter joins that list.
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 4/5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 7.8/10
My Review: Halloween pretty much shows you exactly what’s wrong with horror movies today. Hitchcock once said that (I’m paraphrasing) in a movie, if you put a bomb under a table and it blows up unexpectedly, that’s a shock, but if you show the audience that there’s a bomb under the table and tell them that it will go off in five minutes, that’s suspense. So many movies these days value shock over real suspense (especially due to the current popularity of jumpscares).
Look how suspenseful this movie is, with all it’s slow tracking shots and times when Michael Myers approaches from the background. That bit where Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) collapses against a dark doorway and Myers’ white mask slowly comes into the light next to her is bloody nightmare fuel. I could never say that about a jumpscare in last year’s instalment of this franchise.
It’s also fantastically atmospheric and goes to show how it created the slasher formula and everybody else stole it and made lesser versions. It’s easy to forget how much time the film spends with each character before killing them off. The kills are, if not emotional, much more shocking than if we’d just been introduced to them. Characters also have realistic reactions to these murders. Michael Myers (or The Shape, as the movie credits him) is actually pretty scary in this one. He’s a lot faster and more agile than later films in the series would have you believe. The effect of keeping him in shadows and obscuring his mask makes him a lot more mysterious. There’s never a big reveal moment for his full appearance, because the characters never have a moment to catch their breath.
If there’s one negative I have, some of the other teen’s acting is.... meh. This usually happens in these sort of movies, because the director usually puts much more effort into casting the main lead than the side characters (see also Split).
It’s pretty amazing that I can give a movie five stars but not call it my favourite of that director’s (The Thing is proving hard to beat). Very few directors have scored more than one five star rating from me (off the top of my head I can only think of Hitchcock, Spielberg, Nolan and Zemeckis), and John Carpenter joins that list.
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Watched On: NETFLIX AU
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 4.1/5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 7.5/10
My Review:
FIVE MINUTES IN: Why does everybody say this is so complex? It’s pretty straightforward.
Watched On: NETFLIX AU
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 4.1/5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 7.5/10
My Review:
FIVE MINUTES IN: Why does everybody say this is so complex? It’s pretty straightforward.
ONE HOUR LATER: Wait, what?
Burn After Reading (2008)
Watched On: DVD (Standard Edition)
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 3.5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 7/10
My Review: Really fun movie. John Malkovich, George Clooney, J.K. Simmons and Frances McDormand were all really good, but Brad Pitt was the standout. Great screenplay too.
Godzilla (2014)
Watched On: Digital (Rented from the PlayStation Store)
Score: ⭐⭐1/2
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 3/5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 6.4/10
My Review: The movie really comes alive during the action sequences, and I get the feeling Gareth Edwards cared more about those than the rest of the movie, which is a problem when the action sequences are pretty spaced out in the script. Since the director stops caring about making it look good in those scenes, all you’re left with is paper-thin characters, bad acting, horrible dialogue and a total waste of Sally Hawkins.
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)
Watched On: NETFLIX AU
Score: ⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 2.5/5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 5.7/10
My Review: It had some inventive scares and Jake Gyllenhaal was fantastic in his role, but this was a mostly uneventful horror movie with bad pacing and poor scene transitions. It’s a shame, too, given the occasionally good dialogue and some good cinematography. It’s redeeming qualities are entertaining enough for me to not give this a negative score but I don’t think I’d really recommend it to anyone.
Paths of Glory (1957)
Watched On: Stan Australia
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Avg. Letterboxd Rating: 4.3/5
Avg. iMDB Rating: 8.4/10
My Review: Great Kubrick film that changes from a war movie to an equally intense courtroom drama halfway through. The performances are all fantastic, especially Kirk Douglas, and the screenplay (co-written by Kubrick) is fantastic and more darkly satirical and occasionally hilarious than you might expect from a black-and-white movie named Paths of Glory. Plus, the cinematography is all great, whether it’s the long takes following a commanding officer through a trench or Douglas across no-man’s-land, or the impossibly precise pans in the courtroom scenes. Many moral questions are raised, and are dealt with realistically and thought-provokingly. Highly recommended, especially since it tends to get overshadowed by other Kubrick efforts such as 2001, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket.
Ranking For the Month:
12. Godzilla
11. Velvet Buzzsaw
10. The Fog
9. Escape From New York
8. 78/52
7. Rashomon
6. Burn After Reading
5. Halloween
4. Synecdoche, New York
3. Paths of Glory
2. Django Unchained
1. 12 Angry Men
3. Paths of Glory
2. Django Unchained
1. 12 Angry Men
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