Added my notes on Ichi the Killer (2001) over at Alex on Film. This kicks off a mini-series of commentaries I’ll be doing on Takashi Miike films. Of course the violence in Miike’s movies can be alienating, but what I really respond to is his eye and ability to work in different visual styles. It’s incredible that he’s able to turn out work of such quality at the pace he does.

Added my notes on Murnau’s Faust (1926) over at Alex on Film. This is one of the true classics of the silent age, and a movie that amazes me every time I see it.

The sleep of reason.

Added my notes on Juve vs. Fantômas (1913) over at Alex on Film. This was the second of the Fantômas serials and on the strength of that python crawling in the window I’d call it the most bizarre. Overall, I don’t think these movies are of much interest today except as historical curiosities. But they are curious.

Added my notes on La Jetée (1962) over at Alex on Film. I don’t much care for the set-up to this one, but the rest of it is pure poetry. It’s one of those rare movies that I seem to feel more in every time I see it.

What did you have in mind, exactly?

Added my notes on The Last House on the Left (2009) over at Alex on Film. Why did the 2000s see so many remakes of horror films from the 1970s and ’80s? Just off the top of my head I can think of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, The Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Omen, The Amityville Horror, The Fog, The Crazies, Black Christmas, even I Spit On Your Grave! You know when you’re remaking I Spit On Your Grave (and they did both a remake and a sequel to the remake) that you’ve reached the bottom of some kind of creative barrel. I guess it’s also the nature of the film business to want to go with a familiar commercial brand rather than try to sell audiences an entirely new product. What I find most discouraging, however, is how depressing these remakes are in their general tone and outlook. Gore in the ’70s was grim too, but it also had a playful, inventive spirit to it. Aside from Alexandre Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes, which I actually prefer to the original, these millennial retreads get me down.

Game on.

Added my notes on King Kong (2005) over at Alex on Film. This winds up my look at Kong for now. I still think the original 1933 version was the best, and not just because I’m a film snob. I honestly find it more entertaining. Peter Jackson’s movie is a hugely expensive cartoon. It’s not a bad movie, but it goes on too long and the effects just wear you down in the end.

Tall, dark and handsome.

Added my notes on King Kong (1933) over at Alex on Film. I can’t imagine how audiences in the 1930s reacted to such spectacular effects. I mean, more than eighty years later this is still a really impressive movie.

Welcoming the fresh meat.

Added my notes on Hostel: Part II (2007) over at Alex on Film. I think this series is a bit unfairly tarred with the “torture porn” brush. They aren’t as bad as all that, and they have a contemporary political angle that works pretty well (the 1% as corporate-killer elite). I don’t think this one does as much as it could with the gender switch, perhaps because they just didn’t want to go there. By the strictures of American puritanism, torture is OK but porn is bad. Murder can be seen as a rite of passage for teen audiences, but sex is morally corrupting.

If these walls could talk.

Added my notes on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) over at Alex on Film. This is a personal favourite of mine. It never gets old because it’s such an oddity and outlier.

Added my notes on Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) over at Alex on Film. You might come to this movie with high expectations seeing as it reunites a lot of the same talent as the classic noir Laura (director Preminger, stars Andrews and Tierney, screenwriter Hecht). But it’s not in the same league. I mainly blame Hecht, as it’s a really clumsy script.