Author Archives: matterspamer

REVIEW: Thor

Posted on by
5

Thor
Directed by: Kenneth Branagh
Written by: Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, & Don Payne (screenplay), Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, & Jack Kirby (comic)
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, and Tom Hiddleston

It’s almost hard not to write off Thor as the beginning of an onslaught of mindless summer action movies.  However, with its welcome injection of humor and a toned-down scale, it rises above that classification if only by a little bit.

The best moments of Thor occur outside Asgard, the homeworld of its hero, in a small town in New Mexico.  He arrives there much like many movie aliens, and director Kenneth Branagh riffs off this aspect quite well.  Thor (Chris Hemsworth) brings alien customs (which closely resembles stereotypical viking culture) to such places as small-town diners and hospital rooms.  In one hilarious instance, he smashes a glass down on the floor and demands a refill.

Continue reading →

Five Awesome Movie Moms

Posted on by
1

Good movie moms often go unrecognized.  The past two years, the Best Supporting Actress Oscar has gone to two mother monsters (not Lady Gaga) who give the role kind of a bad name.  So, to celebrate Mother’s Day, we take a look at some moms who either kill their children with kindness, or literally kill for them.

The Bride (Kill Bill)- As played by Uma Thurman, The Bride spends all of the first Kill BIll movie thinking her daughter is dead.  The second half of Volume 2 delves more into their relationship and adds some disarming humanity to the story.  Here’s a mom who takes time out of finishing her revenge conquest to lay in bed and watch Shogun Assassin with her daughter.  If that’s not a great mom, I don’t know what is.

Continue reading →

REVIEW: Fish Tank

Posted on by
5

Fish Tank
Directed by: Andrea Arnold
Written by: Andrea Arnold (screenplay)
Starring: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Harry Treadaway, and Kierston Wareing

Beginning with a head-on view of its protagonist surrounded by the blue walls of an abandoned apartment, Fish Tank explains its title almost right off the bat.  Mia, the 15-year-old girl occupying that frame, takes a little bit longer to get to know, though.

Director Andrea Arnold laces this confrontational tale of emerging adulthood and sexuality with vulgar language and despicable acts; more importantly, though, she fills it to the brim with sympathy.  Though Mia (Katie Jarvis) lives in the slums of Essex with her abusive mother and equally vulgar sister, she’ll be the first to tell you she’s not a victim.  In the first ten minutes, she headbutts a girl just for having the nerve to argue back at her and she attempts to free an imprisoned horse from a band of gypsies.

Continue reading →

REVIEW: Somewhere

Posted on by
1

Somewhere
Directed by: Sofia Coppola
Written by: Sofia Coppola (screenplay)
Starring: Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Chris Pontius, and Michelle Monaghan

The Coppola pop cultural dynasty is an interesting and often overlooked member of the pop culture framework.  It has produced the immortal in Francis Ford Coppola, who directed masterpieces both well-known (The Godfather Trilogy, Apocalypse Now) and forgotten (The Conversation, Tetro).  Other members include Nicolas Cage, who changed his name to forge an identity away from the family name, and Sophia Coppola, who is the most interesting by far.

This Coppola is also a director, though she tried acting to universal disgust in The Godfather Part III.  Behind the camera, though, she is somewhat of a master.  Her latest, vaguely titled Somewhere, is the kind of film nobody really knows what to do with.  It stars nobody in particular and is about nothing in particular.  She is the only selling point because of the critical triumph of her 2003 feature Lost in Translation.

Continue reading →

TRAILER REVIEW: Melancholia

Posted on by
1

Melancholia
Directed by: Lars von Trier
Written by: Lars von Trier
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, and John Hurt

With a reputation built on shocking even those who know he’s after more than that, Lars von Trier is set to debut his latest, “A beautiful movie about the end of the world,” at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.  Melancholia is the act following Antichrist, the director’s disturbingly violent take on the horror genre.

All of von Trier’s fictional films since 1991’s Europa have centered on women being repressed by men, one of whom is often von Trier himself.  Melancholia looks no different, with Kirsten Dunst primed to take the role of Justine, a woman about to be married when the world begins to end.

Continue reading →

ARCHIVE REVIEW: The Royal Tenenbaums

Posted on by
1

The Royal Tenenbaums
Directed by: Wes Anderson
Written by: Wes Anderson & Owen Wilson (screenplay)
Starring: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller and Gwyneth Paltrow

The idea that movies can have a literary quality to them is something that a director like Wes Anderson often takes to heart.  His movies operate on many basic storytelling conventions- the dysfunctional family, the adolescent emerging the cocoon- but within them is an entire world of his own creation.

The Anderson Aesthetic is one where his art and his life-view merge; where the clothes of the characters often meticulously match their surroundings.  It’s a style of filmmaking that can be divisive, which also means that it’s a style that is always interesting.

Continue reading →

REVIEW: Scream 4

Posted on by
1

Scream 4
Directed by: Wes Craven
Written by: Kevin Williamsen (screenplay)
Starring: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Emma Roberts, and David Arquette

Scream 4 makes you wonder what other veteran directors would do if they were offered the chance to comment on the modern state of their respective genres.  How would Alfred Hitchcock approach Hanna?  How would Billy Wilder tackle Your Highness?

Sadly, instead of real filmmakers taking a stab at the confines of their own genres, we get films like the Scary Movie franchise, which set out to mock, scored a few laughs in the first few films, and then became a mockery.  The state of modern movies is just that: movies unintentionally mocking their genres, so much so that it may be hard for many in a modern audience to realize Scream 4 is doing it intentionally.

Continue reading →

If they were in television… Wes Craven

Posted on by
3

Notable films: Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, Red Eye

Famous for: Horror with American allegory, heavy amounts of blood and gore, genre subversion, self-aware horror, torturing a female lead and sometimes letting her live.

Hypothetical title: Euro

Hypothetical premise: Honors student Jane is in the transitional summer between high school or college and has just been informed that her job at the ice cream station has been terminated because it is going out of business.  With absolutely nothing tying her down, she decides to fly to Europe for the summer with her two best friends.  This is set up in the first few episodes.

Continue reading →

ARCHIVE REVIEW: Magnolia

Posted on by
Reply

Magnolia
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, and Philip Seymour Hoffman

Capturing the entirety of the human experience is an ambitious goal, one that many filmmakers never really feel up to tackling.  Paul Thomas Anderson thinks its third feature material.  Let’s face it though, the movies are better when the focus is narrowed.

That’s not to say Magnolia is not a beautiful, often breathtaking piece of work.  It is, in fact, a blueprint of sorts of the new decade of filmmaking that was to follow in the year 2000.  The seemingly unrelated yet interwoven storylines of films like Traffic, Babel or Crash meet the bizarreness of network television polluting Requiem for a Dream.  Bookending the film is the snarky know-it-all narrator you may know from Woody Allen films.

Continue reading →

REVIEW: Hanna

Posted on by
2

Hanna
Directed by: Joe Wright
Written by: Seth Lochhead & David Farr (screenplay)
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, and Olivia Williams

Looking at a DNA report that concludes the subject is “Abnormal,” is probably the last thing a teenager needs to see.  Though when said teenager has just finished disposing a handful of government agents like life were on the “Easy” setting, it may be the least of her worries.  But Hanna (Saorise Ronan) still looks slightly wounded when looking at that piece of paper.  It’s one of the few moments director Joe Wright stops to smell the emotion in this thrilling exercise in kinetic action.

Hanna begins in the arctic wilderness, where her father (Eric Bana) has kept and trained her since he went rogue from the CIA.  She was bred for tactical assassinations, something he infuses with his own agenda.  Hanna is tasked with taking down Marissa (Cate Blanchett) the woman he claims has killed her mother.  Wright never lingers in loss or death in this film, putting Hanna in constant motion throughout.  It is a vision of what last year’s Kick-Ass would’ve looked like had the subject been only focused on Hit-Girl and her father.

Continue reading →