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De Palma is in very familiar territory here. Not that there’s anything wrong with that - no-one does incredibly enjoyable, watchable elegant sleaze quite like De Palma.
Was Luis Guzman in this film the inspiration for Flight of the Conchords’ Hair Helmets?
Honestly, it took me three runs at this film to finish it. The problem, for me, was that the opening half of the film is some of the most turgid setup, written as if the audience is completely stupid. Actually, the whole film treats the audience as if it’s stupid. There’s a bit at the end where the treasure agent has finally figured out who he is and the film has her say all the things out loud that the audience have already worked out ages ago. A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK PLEASE. So yeah, this isn’t a problem that goes away in the film, it’s just that there isn’t enough juice in the first half to justify it. It gets a lot more enjoyable in the second half when it stops pretending to be the first draft of Good Will Hunting/ and goes a little more John Wick.
But tbh I think my main issue with this film is that I just don’t like Ben Affleck.
Classic Amicus. A little bit of camp but a lot of fun. The nightmare sequence was a delight. Also loved the various two-shots of an eyeless skull facing off against Peter Cushing, the greatest eye-actor in history. Mad respect for the multiple shots from the inside of the skull. Mad audacious.
(Minor aside: since this is firmly in the era of using asbestos for snowflakes in films, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of toxic shit Cushing was breathing in during the gas sequence).
I spent a good part of the weekend playing Type Help, an incredible Twine game by William Rous. Each chapter of the story is told in files with the format <timecode>-<two-letter room code>-[list of code for the people in the room at the time], e.g. one of the first you are given is 02-EN-1-6-7-10. It’s been compared to Return of the Obra Dinn and that’s a fair enough comparison – in both games, you progress by analysing the story – but I feel like Type Help is probably the game that will stick with me longer because of the metatextual element. I’m also SO impressed with the mechanics of this. I’ve been working with hypertext for 30 years now and this was pretty new to me (other people have done the “guess the address of the page” before, but never to tell a story like this).
Anyway, this gets my highest recommendation.
I don’t think I took a single breath for the entirety of that heist sequence. Phenomenal.
I love Gareth Evans, but this is, by a huge margin, the worst of his movies. Lazy and uninspired. Even John Woo on autopilot isn’t this bad. It doesn’t help that he tries to hide that this film was shot in Wales and not, in fact, Anytown, USA by using some of the worst CGI I’ve seen in years.
The Netflix effect is real.
There’s probably a great movie in here, it’s just suffocated by self-indulgence and catastrophically terrible script that feels more like a to-do list of pirate movie cliches. Because, in terms of pure visual spectacle, this is incredible. Even my wife, who has very little patience for films like this, was pulled in by the carriage chase sequence and neither of us could see the seams of how they pulled off that falling out a window stunt. The film is full of stuff like this. Giant practical effects that we just don’t see any more. But they go too far. Renny Harlin clearly had no-one telling him “sorry Renny mate, this is a bit much now”. And so, rather than just shooting some kick-ass fight sequence, almost every time Geena Davis is on screen, it’s shot in slow-mo and from five different angles and so half the fight scenes are incomprehensible garbage.
Still, Frank Langella is enjoying himself, hamming it up as the scenery-chewing baddie. So at least someone really enjoyed this film
The “piercing the veil” sequence totally captured me. Astonishing and overwhelming. It’s not surprising that Ludwig Göransson is listed as an executive producer here - music is every bit as important in the storytelling as any of the actors’ performances (which, it should be said, are also across the board incredible). It’s also refreshing to see a modern blockbuster genre film where the credits for the musicians are as long as the credits for vfx.
Best American vampire film since Near Dark.
A long dive into the features that make my ideal music app, and why nothing currently fulfils the brief.
I both love and hate Apple Music. Jon Hicks goes about redesigning it to make it feel more 2025.
tbqh even if they just adopted the “label Apple-created playlists with a wee Apple symbol”, I’d be much happier Apple Music user.
Often overlooked compared to its genre contemporaries like Labyrinth, this is a wonderful inventive piece of filmmaking that deserves a better reputation. Obviously, inviting comparisons to one of Hollywood’s original and brightest darlings is a tall ask. And Return to Oz does itself no favours: instead of the technicolour oomph of the original film, this has a more gritty realism that could almost feel like a betrayal of expectations from an ‘Oz’ film. But it acts as a vital counterweight to the fantasy elements. In Return, the world of Oz feels more grounded and dangerous, not entirely dreamlike and safe. This means the antagonists here are extra terrifying, especially to younger eyes ‐ the Wheelers and Mombi and two of most terrifying villains ever put into a kid’s movie. But it also means that the moments of whimsy, the visual style such as character design of Jack Pumpkinhead and Tik-Tok, feel even more grounded and real and special.
Watched this with my kids and they loved it.