Posts

Revisiting the Cookie Woman: A Case For Halloween 5- The Revenge of Michael Myers

-
Image
The Halloween franchise is one of the most oft-viewed of the classic slasher series. Every October, it only feels right to dust the films off and do an annual re-watch of films that I’ve seen so many times. While the films have been retconned twice at this point (originally with Halloween: H20 pretending that the films 4-6 simply don’t exist, and again with Halloween (2018) ignoring all but the first entry), the middle films often become overlooked. While I obviously love the Jamie Lee Curtis films the most, because Laurie Strode is the driving force behind the franchise for me, I also have some of the most fun watching these controversial entries.   John Carpenter’s Halloween is an undisputed horror masterpiece. There’s a reason that it has gone on to become the phenomenon that it has. With hardly any money at all, Carpenter was able to construct a timeless tale of terror that truly stands the test of time. The task of following that up with a number of sequels is a seemingly imp
Post a Comment
Read more

A Quarantined Halloween: How Letterboxd's Hooptober Is Salvaging The Spooky Spirit

-
Image
It's now officially spooky season, everyone! With restrictions on gatherings and people not feeling comfortable going out, it's really easy to simply think that Halloween has been cancelled this year. While that may pertain to costume parties and fun social activities like that, Halloween can live on in other ways. Members of one particular social media outlet are making sure that Halloween is just as spectacular this year as it always has been. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) Letterboxd is a film social media app where you can log the films you watch, review them, see what your friends are watching, and make new friends in the film community that have similar interests. I've been using Letterboxd for four years now to simply log the films that I watch, just to keep track as I watch so many. During quarantine this year, I decided to look further into the social elements of the app and discovered a really rich and excited horror film community that I am now
Post a Comment
Read more

Blood Reds and Oceanic Blues: Looking at Color in Film

-
Image
Film is a medium that combines so many elements to present one work to the viewer. It’s made of images, sound (or lack of sound), movement, color, performance, and so much more. Looking more in-depth at color in film proves that the variances in pigment on screen yield emotional responses and resonate with the themes of the movie. I’ve always been a fan of really dramatic instances of color that set films apart from standard and bland Hollywood fare. That’s not to say that blockbuster films can’t have incredible colorful visual components, however. It’s just not usually the focal point of your average Fast and the Furious vehicle. I love when filmmakers really attempt to connect the viewer to the characters through specific color palettes. It's details like this, that while clearly visible, can often go unnoticed by someone casually viewing a movie.     Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) When you think of color in film, Amélie is generally a great jumping off point. The palette o
Post a Comment
Read more

A Look at the DC Animated Movie Universe (Or How 75-Minute Animated Films Build Better Characters than 3 Hour Live-Action Epics)

-
Image
I know what you’re thinking. Why would you watch 15 animated DC films? To be honest, I don’t really have an answer to that question. But over the past few weeks, I have. And to counter that further, I’m glad that I did. Everyone knows that the current state of live-action DC superhero films is pretty messy. With Wonder Woman (Jenkins, 2017), Aquaman (Wan, 2018), Shazam (Sandberg, 2019) and Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (Yan, 2020) being the exceptions, Zack Snyder’s competitor to the Marvel universe is chock full of weak characterization, poorly executed CGI villains that are mainly drawing the heroes to over-the-top lasers shooting up towards the sky climaxes. It’s because of this that the format of the animated universe is so successful. While their live-action counterparts deal heavily with grandiose and tiresome CGI battles, the animated films focus on character-driven moments that really help the viewer understand the heroes fightin
Post a Comment
Read more

Black Films To Watch (That Aren't White Savior Narratives)

-
Image
When looking at Netflix today, Tate Taylor’s popular film The Help (2011) was in the Top 10. To a lot of people this will make sense. It’s a film that multiple age groups have enjoyed and they feel good when they watch it. I’ve seen countless people post the image of Viola Davis comforting the child version of Emma Stone’s character in the film by saying “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” While that is a positive message that everyone can use to boost themselves up, the film is a symptom of a long and tired trope in Hollywood: the white savior film. In talking about films that deal with race, some of the first films that white people will bring up are films like The Help , Driving Miss Daisy (Beresford, 1989), and now Green Book (Farrelly, 2018). This is very troubling. What these films have in common is their need to share the Black experience through the white perspective. Each of these films has a main character that is white and through their experiences with
Post a Comment
Read more

The Problem With Guilty Pleasure Movies

-
Image
When you think of the movies that you like the most, which films immediately come to mind? Is it the Oscar-nominated dramas that make you think and feel complex emotions for a two-hour period? How about the action films that you’re embarrassed to say that you’ve seen the entire franchise and enjoy each new entry (hello, Fast and Furious !)? Maybe the romantic comedies that you watched growing up with friends and family that created formative and nostalgic memories for you that you relive each time you watch them? Or maybe it’s just the movies that scare the shit out of you? For me it’s a nice mix of all of the above. The concept of the guilty pleasure is something that I think kind of demeans the enjoyment that we get from them. What exactly is making us feel guilty about re-watching Dirty Dancing (Ardolino, 1987) or Clueless (Heckerling, 1995) for the umpteenth time? Why the hell should it bother us that we’ve seen all eight Fast and Furious movies, and also Hobbs and Shaw (Leit
Post a Comment
Read more