Tag: quentin tarantino

The Lords of Salem: A Love Letter To A Lost Genre

salem


The Lords of Salem (2013)
Written & Directed by Rob Zombie
101 min.

Mild spoilers.

If there’s one movie trend I can totally get behind, it’s the “B Movie Love Letter”. It’s almost its own genre at this point. Recent examples include Neil Marshall’s Doomsday, Wright and Pegg’s Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (and their upcoming The World’s End), Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained (really his whole catalogue), Ti West’s House of the Devil, Lexi Alexander’s Punisher: War Zone, and Peter Travis’ Dredd. And Star Wars and Indiana Jones are some not so recent examples. These filmmakers mine their inspirations for their best aspects and transplant them into modern productions—which are almost inevitably better than the movies they pay homage to, as the ‘originals’ were often made quickly and on the cheap just to provide cheap thrills and make a buck or two. Dredd was much talked about last year, and I’m hoping The Lords of Salem gets similar attention this year, because it’s even more fun.
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10 Actually Good Movies People Think Are Cool

tarantino Quentin Tarantino, director of some actually good ‘cool’ movies. This is a companion piece to my 10 Awful Movies People Think Are Cool list.  Read that one first.  Or read this one first.  It doesn’t really matter. Continue reading 10 Actually Good Movies People Think Are Cool

Promised Land: Good Job, Gus

promised


Promised Land (2012)
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Screenplay by John Krasinski & Matt Damon
Story by Dave Eggers
106 min.

Promised Land is a good movie.  And Gus Van Sant is a good director.  And Matt Damon and John Krasinski are good actors and writers.

This is a movie that nobody saw last year.  It’s a small movie, the kind that still gets made by mega celebrities like Matt Damon but that nobody sees because the market is pretty well taken over by other kinds of movies like Taken 2 and The Vow.  But I’m not here to wax pretentiously about lowest common denominato, fluff that ‘Hollywood’ is so ‘evil’ for churning out.  (The hipsters have that market well cornered.)  I’m here, rather, to talk about Promised Land.  But first, about Gus Van Sant.
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Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Brian De Palma (But Didn’t Care Enough to Ask)

depalma


When I was in junior high school, Scarface was the most talked about movie in the hallways.  It was 2000, and those hallways were a reflection of the culture at large.  One time a kid asked me, “Who directed Scarface, Scorsese?”  He had never heard of Brian De Palma.

There’s a popular book called Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.  It’s a gossipy, oral history of 60s and 70s American movies.  In the back of the book, they summarize the directors integral to the movement and give a filmography for each. Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas, and Malick are featured, but not Brian De Palma—despite being mentioned heavily in the book.  You’d think the guy that gave Robert De Niro his first on-screen appearance (The Wedding Party, 1969) and gave him steady work way before Scorsese ever did, would be important enough to mention.
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Argo: I Barely Watched It (So You Don’t Have To)

argo
Yes, this is really from the god damn movie.

Argo
Directed by Ben Affleck
Screenplay by Chris Terrio
121 min.

I tapped out after about 15 minutes on this one, and normally, I’d just not review the thing on here, and tweet “argo sucks ass” and call it a day, but I gotta talk about this fucking thing. Because I look at a movie like this and I can’t understand the world I live in. This movie is so the antithesis of everything I value as far as movies are concerned (and what you, ideally, should value too) and it’s times like these I feel like the great Roddy Piper in They Live, staring at the plain-to-see ugliness in front of me, and I just wanna force glasses onto everyone around me with my words. So here goes.
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